INTERVIEW WITH FLICK DAVIS AND LARRY MEROVKA
IN
WASHINGTON DC, MARCH 27, 1984
BY
DAVE HALL
Tape 2, Side 1
Dave: March 27, 1984 and this is a discussion with Larry Merovka and Mr. Flick Davis in
Washington DC about some of their experiences while they were agents and regional
supervisors in the division of law enforcement. Larry, tell me about Allen vs.
Merovka. We’ve seen that in all of our manuals and everything, but there’s just a sort
of a short synopsis describing what happened. So what really happened out there?
Larry: Well Dave, that was quite an unusual case in that the state established a waterfowl
refuge down in the Rio Grande Valley along the river. Part of the refuge is a river
proper and part of it was on land owned by the state game fish department on which
a bountiful crop of corn had been raised that year, and also in the perimeter area the
state game commission decreed that certain privately owned land would be part of the
refuge. Well there was an attorney, [Plumber] if I remember, that was involved in
this here to the extent that this [Plumber] owned a small tract of land within the
exterior boundaries of this refuge. I think it was probably about eight or ten acres and
it was covered with big cottonwood trees, and the state game department went in and
cut down all of the corn in the fields there; chopped it up and spread corn all over the
ground. It was like a duck banquet area and the ducks and geese really poured into
this baited area. The state game department officers went down there on the opening
day of waterfowl season and seized some ducks and geese from two people who were
shooting in this small plot of privately owned land within the refuge, and issued
citations to these people for hunting on a refuge. Well, they took the seized birds and
put them in a cold storage plant and before the day was over this lawyer got the court
to issue a writ of replevin and they got the birds back. Then the state officers who
made the case and charged the men with hunting on a refuge came up to my office and
told me that these birds were being attracted into this baited place, which they
interpreted to be a violation of the federal regulations, which decreed that you weren’t
permitted to take waterfowl in a area where their being attracted to bait. So I went
down the next day to take a look at the situation and I agreed that it was a place that
I didn’t feel they could lawfully hunt. So, we had bureau post-it signs on hand and the
federal agent in charge there at Albuquerque and I, Bob Kinghorn, we went down and
posted the private land and put these people on notice that we interpreted the federal
regulation to prohibit that any hunting around the area where the birds are being
baited into. So, the lawyer then went into federal court in Albuquerque and applied
for a restraining order to restrain me from, and any men working under my supervision
from bothering anybody hunting on that, in that area where there was bait. So we
had a hearing…(unintelligible)…court and the judge ruled in my favor. Well then
Davis/Merovka 2
the case was appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Colorado, and
when it got up there the court overruled the U.S. District judge in Albuquerque and
decreed that in as much as the people involved as defendants in the case (they’re not
exactly defendants but close to it) that in as much as the state did debating that they
were not bound to abide by the applicable regulation. We went back and forth.
They’d win one round, we’d win the other round. Finally, I had retired by then and
was anxious to do some traveling with my wife and so I was anxious to get the case
settled, and so we settled out of court for a nominal sum of money, damages,
punitive damages and the government paid it because we were acting in accordance
with the instructions from our ranking officer, including the U.S. Soliciters Office…
ruled that we felt that we did right when we posted the area and so forth, but the
higher court didn’t agree with that so that’s what…
Dave: What did you have to pay?
Larry: I believe in the final analysis they levied a pretty good size judgment against us to
start with, seems to me the total may be around $10 – $12,000, but after that went
unappealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. Then that court decreed
that the amount…(unintelligible)…was excessive. The judgment was based on two
things: one of ‘em was the number of days that they were deprived of an opportunity
to hunt on there, and they valued so much per day for the fact that they had been
deprived of an opportunity to hunt there. Secondly, of course, they assessed punitive
damages against us. I remember one thing very distinctly that the attorney for the
plaintiffs stated that sort of teed me off pretty stormy and that was this: “Ladies and
gentlemen of the jury now this is an opportunity for you to get even with these feds
who are always imposing these onerous restrictions on ya. This is your chance to get
even with those….” He actually said that in court. That was really, I’d say, would be a
prejudice statement, but anyway that’s what happened. I admire…my retort to that I
can remember was this: I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury I claim to be a man
of high honor, a man of high integrity and I wouldn’t do anything wrong intentionally.
If there’s anything done improperly it was certainly not done with any malice.’ I
remember I got that lick in. I don’t guess it made a very good impression on the jury,
because still they ruled against us, but anyway that was an interesting case and if I had
it to do over again even though I had retired and I wanted to do some traveling with
my wife, and I had planned to do some traveling after I had retired, we weren’t able to
do it on account of this case pending in court. Finally, I got tired of it and I said,
‘let’s settle out of court.’ So you asked how much my part was? I believe my part in
the final analysis was $500, in which I was reimbursed promptly. Chuck Lawrence in
Washington always did a wonderful job of getting that thing facilitated, and I got my
money back in a very short period of time. It was an interesting case and I personally
feel that we were right. The law decreed, it didn’t say whether you knew that bait was
put out there or not. It was there and attracting the birds; you were not permitted to
hunt around it. Well, that isn’t what the court ruled. If I had it to do over again, even
Davis/Merovka 3
though I wanted to get things settled so I could do some traveling, I would of appealed
the U.S. Supreme Court…(unintelligible)…and review. I’m sorry now that that
wasn’t done because I still feel that goin’ to that higher tribunal that we woulda got a
favorable ruling on that.
Dave: Flick, I can remember when I was a young agent you always seemed to have a group
of agents around you, not only loyal but there was really a “Esprit De Corps,” as it
was in all the regions. Larry Merovka had his guys, Bill Davis had his guys, but they
all worked together. I remember, the first time I believe I ever met you, you were out
on Sunday afternoon and had a pair of blue shorts on; I’ll never forget that, out there
giving out the banding gear at Fort Snelling I saw all the crews goin’ into Canada.
They’d stop off in Minnesota on the way up to Canada and ol’ Flick was out there
givin’ the guys the last instructions and givin’ out the equipment that was stored
there.
Flick: Well, we always stored the gear at Fort Snelling. Fort Snelling was disbanded you
know; they used to be quite an active military post. The buildings were still there so
they assigned a couple of buildings to the Fish and Wildlife Service for storage
facilities and we used one of the buildings. When they’d come from banding why
they’d always bring their gear to Fort Snelling and we’d store it there, and in as much
as Minnesota was sort of on the way to Canada for the banding work, they’d stop in
there and leave it. And when they’d get ready to go back to banding they’d stop by
and pick it up and get going.
Dave: Flick, I went up there seven years, some guys went a lot longer than I did, but there
was something about that Canadian assignment that was very rough work, but at the
same time it gave the agents the ability from Maine to Alaska to Minnesota to Florida
to New Mexico to be together, and work together. Also, I felt very comfortable to
come back home and talk about what was going on on the breeding ground from
having been there. In a way I hate to see that we still do some of that.
Flick: It was a real wonderful training ground we always thought. As a matter of fact we in
region three, we were always willing and anxious to delegate agents to different
assignments and different parts of the country. We thought it was good training for
them. One of the fine things that happened to us in Canada as far as the banding
work was concerned - - we developed a wonderful working relationship with the
Canadian authorities.
Dave: We really did. I was amazed. The mounted police I met in Manitoba, Saskatchewan
and Alberta knew most of our agents there along the border there by name.
Flick: Yes, that’s right.
Davis/Merovka 4
Dave: It was amazing also that even their families associated with each other, back and forth
across the border.
Flick: That’s right.
Dave: It was obvious that there was an outstanding relationship between the two agencies
and the two countries.
Flick: It was fortunate for me that I was able to cooperate with the mounted police and I
made several trips to Hudson Bay with mounted police. We were delegated by the
Washington office to go up there help them with enforcement work to give ‘em
some ideas on how our enforcement worked out as far as waterfowl was concerned.
In Canada the Northwest mounted police were the same as the federal officers. They
enforced the waterfowl regulations. They enforced all the regulations, course they
enforced the waterfowl regulations also.
Dave: Well Flick digress a little bit. How about tellin’ me (I never have asked you this) how
You got interested in fish and wildlife law enforcement. When you started I know it
Was in Iowa, but I’d like to know about that.
Flick: I suppose I developed a love for wildlife by my father. I can remember when he’d
never go duck hunting without taking me along…[we] hunted ducks in the spring
of the year then. He would always take me along with him. Other times there’d be
people want him to go hunting, and he’d say, “Well, I’ll get the kid and we’ll go.” I
suppose I developed a love for wildlife then. I can remember getting in the top of
haystacks. We used to…down in the river bottoms they’d have hay, they’d cut hay
and stack it up. Dad and I would climb up on a haystack and get in the haystacks,
and the ducks would be flying low and flying all over. We’d just set in the hay-stack
and he’d shoot ‘em out of the blind that we had. I suppose I developed a love
for wildlife…
Dave: Where would that have been? What county was that in?
Flick: Butler County.
Dave: What river was that?
Flick: That’ve been the Iowa, north branch of the Iowa.
Dave: In those years Flick, were there a lot of waterfowl?
Flick: Yeah, there was lots of waterfowl. Every puddle would have waterfowl in it. I can
remember after I went to work for the Iowa Conservation Department that we were
Davis/Merovka 6
assigned to the Missouri River for the flight of waterfowl up the river, and it would
last for six days sometimes. That flight was continuous day and night. They would
stop if it was raining…(unintelligible)…they’d stop over town and we’d stay down in
Iowa. They’d stop over town and make such a racket the people couldn’t sleep and
they’d raise the dickens with trying to turn the lights off so that they’d move on.
They were attracted by the lights of the city, and these geese, this was mostly blue and
snow geese and ducks that would come up the river. The river then, the Missouri
river, the bars were sand, they had red willows growing on them. The birds would
roost on the bars at night and at about eight in the morning they’d take off and go out
into the fields to feed, and usually they’d hit picker picked corn fields. That was one
of the things that developed waterfowl problems in Iowa, particularly in Iowa, was the
mechanical corn picker because they shelled lots of corn and left con in the fields.
Dave: They weren’t too efficient in those days and they left a lot of grain.
Flick: Well yeah, they’d shell off corn and there’d be shelled corn that’d being laying in the
field. Then it would rain; it would be wet and sloppy in little puddles all over.
Dave: It’s hard for people in my generation Flick to understand what you just said because
I thought I had seen the good years in the fifties; there was quite a few ducks. In Iowa
today the duck hunting is really not that good, according to my friends that hunt there.
What years would that of been when you were a kid with your father?
Flick: I was born in nineteen hundred and three and I suppose I was about seven, eight years
old then.
Dave: So it would have been prior to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, like I say, when the
spring…(unintelligible).
Flick: Yeah, right.
Dave: In those years there weren’t that many hunters were there?
Flick: No. Very few, very few hunters.
Dave: If someone asked you Flick what your opinion of what’s happened to our waterfowl,
I’d just like to know what your reaction would be.
Flick: Well of course I’ve seen a decrease as the years go on; there’s less waterfowl all the
time seems to me.
Dave: Would you say it’s a multiple of reasons or any one particular reason? How would
you see it?
Davis/Merovka 7
Flick: Oh yes I’m sure there’s been several reasons for it. I think one species of bird that
hasn’t been bothered too bad is the Canada geese in the Midwest. That’s the region
that I used to work. The Canada geese has probably increased in numbers. It used
to be when I was a kid if someone killed a Canada goose they’d get their picture
in the paper and get a big story about it. Just one Canada goose would be dead. Now
it’s no problem at all; they kill Canada geese all the time during the season. They got
‘em there all summer as a matter of fact.
Dave: That’s ironic too to me. My first reaction to that is that the breeding grounds for the
Canada goose is still in pretty good shape, and we’ve probably regulated the kill on
the Canada geese better than we have on any other bird, so it shows to me that there’s
two things: overshooting, over harvest and loss of breeding grounds and wintering
grounds also. There’s the tendency on some people’s part to de-emphasize the
importance of controlling the kill, over shooting, over harvest or whatever. If I were
to ask you what would of happened if there hadn’t of been Bill Davis’, Larry
Merovka’s and Flick Davis, and even going back to Ray Holland (a lot of the guys
that started us out)? Do you think we’d still be shooting any waterfowl today?
Flick: No, I doubt it.
Dave: Do you think law enforcement has had an impact on…?
Flick: I’m sure it has. I’m sure it has.
Dave: I feel the same way, of course I came along many years after you did. I think that law
enforcement is not the only answer, but certainly it’s had more of a part in
managing these resources than some people realize.
Flick: That’s true. I think one of the bad things that our Bureau has done is knock down corn
and feed on the refuge, concentrating birds on the refuge and holding them there for
such long periods of time.
Dave: When did you first see duck baiting? Where was it?
Flick: Jesus, I don’t know…(long pause)….I don’t know where I first saw it. I don’t
remember.
Dave: Do you remember what period it would have been in?
Flick: It would have been shortly after I went to work for the Bureau. I was a U.S. deputy
game warden for four years and then took the civil service examination for game
management agent, U.S. game warden, and in 1934 I received…1939 I received an
Davis/Merovka 8
appointment, then I worked steadily from then on. I don’t recall when I saw the first
baiting, whether it was while I was a U.S. deputy game warden.
Dave: Did you ever witness the dry pin slaughter holes in Illinois that they refer to as “dry
pin slaughter [pens],” or whatever (they got good names for ‘em)?
Flick: No, as a matter of fact I’ve never had much experience with baiting in Illinois that I
can recall. If I had I don’t recall.
Dave: Did you ever see any baiting in Iowa while you were a state wildlife officer there?
Flick: Yes, there was baiting going on along the Missouri River.
Dave: That would have been prior to 1939…
Flick: Yeah.
Dave: …(unintelligible)…1934 to 1939?
Flick: Yeah.
Dave: What was your biggest problem once you became an agent as far as doing your job?
What were the things that you were most involved in?
Flick: Over limits I suppose. Out of season, had a lot of out of season hunting, and that was
true throughout the region. We had eleven states in the Midwest.
Dave: In those years transportation was much more difficult than it is today. Now how did
you guys get together and work together and coordinate your activities? There
weren’t FTS telephones. What did you do in those days if you wanted to get some
word to an agent or try to get up a detail?
Flick: Well, we’d us a telephone I suppose, if one was available. If one wasn’t, I don’t
know. I don’t recall.
Dave: When you went to work in Iowa, or when you were working as a state agent in Iowa
was there close cooperation between the state and federal agencies?
Flick: Yes. Real close. We always had good relations. I recall when I went to work for the
Bureau as a game management agent I had a Ford automobile and a [Old Town] canoe
with…(unintelligible)…on it, and a carrier on the top of it and I’d follow the birds in
the spring of the year starting in Iowa; when I first started out I started in Iowa, follow
the birds on up to the Canadian line then come back after…I’d stay about thirty days
Davis/Merovka 9
along the Canadian line, then come back to Iowa and go to St. Louis and check furs in
fur houses down there for illegal shipment of furs. The fur companies had to report
all the furs that they bought, and we’d check their invoices and see if they were
shipping in furs from Iowa or Illinois or Missouri or some place like that. Then we’d
work on that for about two or three months usually. In St. Louis while it was hot and
sticky; really we just didn’t like that very well. Then we’d take out when the birds
started back; we’d start at the Canadian line and go to the Gulf of Mexico, follow ‘em
all the way down. I usually came back then after the season was over in Louisiana or
where ever we were working on the Gulf. We’d worked there ‘til after the season for
a month or so, then I’d always come back to Missouri. I’d worked at Sikeston,
Missouri, headquarters there, and worked out of there ‘til the birds started back in the
spring of the year, then I’d go on up to the Canadian line again.
Dave: The camaraderie in between the agents north, south, east and west in this organization
is always…
Flick: Oh it was great. It was wonderful. We had wonderful cooperation from them.
Dave: I guess being able to work together as much as you did, even though transportation
was kind of difficult compared to today. You worked from Louisiana to the Canadian
border?
Flick: That’s right.
Dave: Flick, tell me if you remember some of the agents, the older agents that were working
when you came on board, some of them that you can remember.
Flick: Well, there was Leo Childers in South Dakota and Burt [Shafer]; he worked out of
Wisconsin, Minnesota. And, Ed Carter in Wisconsin, Curtis Allen in Missouri, Harry
[Barmire] in St. Louis, John Perry who worked out of the…what’s that station there…
Dave: Peoria? He was in Peoria at one time.
Flick: Yeah, he worked out of Peoria, but he also was in Memphis.
Dave: I want to talk later with you and Larry Merovka both about him. He must have been
the first undercover officer this organization had.
Flick: Yeah, I think so.
Dave: I’d like to talk to you guys about that on a special part of the tape. What about Ray
Davis/Merovka 10
Holland? Did you ever know Ray Holland?
Flick: No I never knew him. He was before my time.
Dave: You knew Ernie Swift.
Flick: Oh, very well. A very dear friend of mine.
Dave: He was an example, in my opinion, of a man who understood the importance of law
enforcement.
Flick: Oh he sure did. He was the director of the Wisconsin Department of Conservation.
Dave: He later came to Washington.
Flick: Yes. Assistant director I believe. Yeah, he was a great friend of mine.
Dave: Over the years Flick I know that you’ve been able to carry on a very firm, strong law
enforcement program in all the states that you supervised, but one of the things that
always impressed me that you were well thought of even among the violators, so to
speak. I guess it was the way you conducted yourself.
Flick: Well, I don’t know. One of our philosophies was that we’d always…if a man violated
the law the first thing we’d do was ask ourselves, “Does the evidence we have support
The case” that we were about to make against the man? If we don’t think it has the
evidence why, we don’t prosecute the case. But, in no instance do you ever let a man
go without takin’ him to court, if he’s violated and you think the evidence will support
your charges. If he’s to be relieved in any way it will be up to the judge to make the
relief, not you, and we always told our agents that, and…(unintelligible)…
we never did let anyone go. If we thought they were in violation of the law and we
could prosecute ‘em, we’d take ‘em to the court and tell the court the truth about the
case. If it was a minor thing, why we’d tell the court so and leave the court to decide
the penalty, if there was to be a penalty.
Dave: Well in those years public awareness, public acceptance of some of the new federal
laws…wasn’t easy out there was it?
Flick: No, but I think they had more respect for the federal law then they had for the state
laws generally.
Dave: Why did you decide to become a federal agent? I’m sure you were in your home state
and I’m sure you love Iowa and everything; why did you decide to be a U.S. Fish and
Wildlife agent knowing you were gonna probably have to leave your home state and
Davis/Merovka 11
travel and move?
Flick: Well, as a U.S. deputy game warden I became very well acquainted with Jess
Thompson, who was an agent in Iowa at that time. I knew Jess and worked with
Him very closely, and he worked with me. I don’t’ know, I just liked his attitude and
the philosophy that he had, and I thought it would be a good thing for me. I was a
state game warden then and had been for six years, so I tried to get a federal job and
made it.
Dave: Well Flick, there’s never been any serious corruption what so ever in this organization
since the day it started has there?
Flick: Not that I know of.
Dave: Never been any bad publicity that relates to the way agents over all conduct
themselves and do their job. Do you think that has anything to do with the public and
the state? Generally, the states attitude to it, and the public about…(Dave is
interrupted by loud noises from the audio equipment)…. O.K. Larry. We’re gonna
talk about John Perry. He was from everything I can read and hear, he was the guy
that sort of started doing the first undercover work. Do you remember, how’d that get
started and what did they do?
Larry: This is Larry Merovka talkin’. I met John Perry at one of the annual spring get-togethers
that we had in St. Louis. You see, Missouri and Illinois were two die-hard
states with respect to observance of the decree against hunting waterfowl on our...
(unintelligible)…to the nesting ground in the spring of the year. For quite a long time
after the Migratory Bird Treaty Act regulation became effective we concentrated our
enforcement efforts in the spring of the year in Missouri and Illinois. We always got
together to formulate plans for our spring patrols in St. Louis, Missouri, and that’s
where I met John Perry. John Perry was a native of Nashville, Tennessee. Big, tall
handsome man, quite articulate, real nice personality, and with a strong sense of
humor. He and I hit it off real well right after I met up with him. One of the things
for which John was quite noted was this: he conducted the first undercover operation
that I am aware of against market hunting, and at the time when John was stationed
in Peoria, Illinois. He got the idea of posing as a alcoholic bum who supported his
booze habit and general sustenance by buying and selling wild ducks. He grew a
beard and had on dirty cloths (a typical seedy lookin’ character; he looked like a
typical skid row bum). He went down on the Illinois river; he knew by reputation who
was doing the market hunting and he started buying ducks from these people and
brought ‘em back and put ‘em in storage and marked ‘em for evidence in Peoria. In
time of course all these people were arrested, and when they came into federal court
they were absolutely amazed; John had been dressed up, slicked up, shaved up, looked
like a bank, Wall Street lawyer. And they just couldn’t hardly believe it when they
Davis/Merovka 12
saw John appearing in that fashion. He was a handsome lookin’ man.
Flick: Do you have any pictures in his…
Dave: I got only one. Do you have some pictures of him?
Flick: I’ve got one. I didn’t bring it with me I don’t think.
Dave: Maybe some time…
Flick: I want you to come by my place. I’m living all alone. I got plenty of room. You can
come and stay with me and I’ll turn you lose in the basement. I got all the books and
every damn thing down there you can imagine.
Dave: Flick, did John Perry, was he workin’ when you were working in that region?
Flick: Yeah.
Dave: You got to know him real well.
Flick: Well I knew him. I didn’t know him as well as Larry did, but I knew him. [Barmier]
was another.
Dave: Did anybody ever, I know at that time there probably wasn’t any discussion about it,
but I wonder where he came up with the idea to work undercover because see, there
wasn’t any law enforcement agencies then that had any undercover. This was
maybe some of the first undercover…
Larry: As far as I know I’m gonna give 100% credit for that to John Perry. I don’t know
anybody else that had anything to do with it. I think he just conceived the idea…he
was stationed in…you were asking a while ago Flick as to where he was head-quartered.
Later on he was headquartered in Wisconsin and I have his address there
in my files somewhere. He finally wound up coming back into to Memphis,
Tennessee, where he started, before he retired. I don’t remember how long he’s been
dead, but I thought a lot of John Perry. He was a fine officer and dedicated like most
all the federal agents I ever met. I never saw a finer bunch of law enforcement
officers than our corps of federal game law. They had a fine camaraderie, fine
relationship, wonderful cooperation between the agents and practically no
jealously that I ever was aware of. I was real happy, and real happy to say now
that I never found a finer bunch of men than the federal game warden. I’ll say
this: if there ever was an incorruptible corps of federal law enforcement officers
it certainly was the federal game agent. They were just as incorruptible as were
the FBI. They were just a fine corps of men and I’m real proud to say at this time that
Davis/Merovka 13
I’m very proud to have been one of ‘em. I really am.
Dave: Well you know Larry it’s quite obvious the early court decision, and this is before
wildlife crimes were felt as serious as they are today because we’ve seen such a
dwindling population, but it was quite obvious to me from reading these court
decisions that our guys conducted themselves, like Flick said, “[in] a very professional
way,” because we had almost a consistent winner in the courts. We hardly ever lost
any cases, and the ones that were contested only the circuit and even in the Supreme
court we hardly ever lost a case. That was a credit to the theory that you put forward
Flick, about don’t take a man to court unless you’ve got all the evidence. Once you
build that kind of reputation in the federal courts, it’s apparent that the judges from
one part of the country to another talk to each other and I think our agents through the
years have held…
Larry: Have made a difference. I’m sure of that. Let me interject a thought here along the
line of your discussion, and that is this: one of the reasons we were able to be quite
professional without all the formal training you get now days is this: we had a man
there that wrote…(unintelligible)…federal game law enforcement by the name of
Frank Calaghan, and I knew him real well. He and I were good friends. He handled
all of the cases that came into the Washington office and whenever there had to be
any sort of a liaison of any kind with the courts he handled it before we had (at that
time) a lawyer for the agency. He was a fella that instilled the concept that officers
should be incorruptible. He was one of the people certainly did that. He was a close
friend of mine. I thought an awful lot of this guy. He was here in the Washington
office and he handled all the caseloads. Everything that had to do with law
enforcement, he was the one that…he might have had a supervisor over him, but
actually he was the one that did most of the work.
Dave: What was his title, Larry? Do you remember?
Larry: Well, really, I don’t recall what it was…
Dave: But he worked under several chiefs then?
Larry: Oh yeah. I don’t think he died in office, I think he died after he retired.
Flick: He did. He died after he retired.
Larry: Yeah, I’m quite sure. Flick will verify this: he was just a fine gentleman wasn’t he?
Flick: Oh yes.
Larry: He was a man that I would say inspired, instilled me to do a good job more than
Davis/Merovka 14
any individual that I was associated with in the early days. He did that with
everybody. He was the one that presided over all aspects of discussions of the
enforcement of the Federal government. Every time we had a conference, Mr.
Callahan was the man that stood up there and answered the questions and suggested
how we ought to operate and he pointed out pitfalls of law enforcement, which of
course everybody knows there’s quite a few of them, particularly in the field of search
and seizure. We got fine inspiration from him. I would recognize him as one of the
outstanding employees in the early days of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Dave: Flick, Larry mentioned training and if I remember (and I do remember) up in region 3
(we used to refer to them as “Flick’s boys”) that you got together a team of instructors
and went around putting on law enforcement training.
Flick: That’s right.
Dave: To this day several of us are probably in this position because of the influence that
that training had on us when I was in another position, but at that time it was hard
to get into the law enforcement because you had to have at least three years of
conservation law enforcement experience and I chose to come in from the federal
system through refuges. Some of the guys came in through the state agencies, which
was just as good. I’m interested to know how you decided or how all that happened?
How did you put together that team of agents and put together that training?
Flick: Well I don’t know, but I think we started out with the idea that we had to have men
that had good backgrounds in wildlife management or enforcement. It got to the
point where we were hiring only people that had degrees in wildlife management or
enforcement of some kind. It wasn’t too easy to come by really. So we decided that
we’d have a training school, we’d run a training school for our people that we
already had that hadn’t had some of that background. I think that’s the way it started
out probably.
Dave: But you recognized the need for training men, and it went over pretty well.
Flick: We discussed it with the Washington office and they said, “Go ahead, see what you
can do with it.” So, we went ahead then and started out…
Dave: What you did, you knew your men well enough to know the expertise that each one of
them had in various areas.
Flick: That’s right.
Dave: We might talk about a few of them. Like Chuck [Nippen] I don’t guess anyone knew
more about waterfowl more than Chuck [Nippen].
Davis/Merovka 15
Flick: No, Chuck…(unintelligible).
Dave: He became an expert photographer and a waterfowl identifier. He was one of the first
guys to realize that just looking at [study skins] was not good enough. You had to
look
at em’ in the air, on the water…
Flick: Chuck worked for the, when we hired him, he worked for the Ohio Conservation
Department as a state warden in Ohio. We hired him and he’d taken the examination
and became eligible to us, so we hired him. I put him in Minnesota up at [Fumigee],
Minnesota, and he was there for about three or four months and he came down one
day…(unintelligible)… wanted to know if he could come in the office, and I said,
“Sure, come on in.” So he came in and said he was gonna resign, that he didn’t like
the station at [Fumigee], and I said well hell we’ll try and get you another station if
you don’t like that up there. “No,” he said, “I think I’m [gonna] resign.” I tried to talk
him out of it, but I wasn’t able to do it. So, he did resign and he went back to Ohio
and he was a commercial photographer. He had a business of his own there and had a
building that the business was in. His brother-in-law operated the business while
Chuck was gone. After about a year I think, I stopped over to see him. I used to keep
in touch with him, but I went to see him one time and talk to him about coming to
work for the Fish and Wildlife Service. He said, he didn’t know he’d have to take the
examination, to see if he could get the examination. So I called the civil service
outfit in our region and asked them about it, and they said he had three years in which
to take advantage of that. If he’d retire, why he could still use his passing grade on
the civil service examination, so I hired him again. I don’t remember where he went
to work then.
Dave: But you had Joe Hopkins as one of your instructors.
Flick: Yeah, Joe Hopkins was an Iowa boy. He was a supervisor of agents out in
[Estherville], Iowa. I knew Joe very well. He was a fine man. As a matter of fact,
when Joe moved up to [Curtis Falls] in our region from Illinois he told me he wanted
to transfer to the [Curtis Falls]. I told him I was gonna retire before long and I wanted
to recommend him to take my job when I retired, and so he went on up the [Fergus
Falls] and he built a house up there and was there about three or four years I guess.
Then, they wanted someone to come to Washington and they asked me if I had a man
that would be suitable for the job, and I recommended Joe for it. That’s how Joe
came into Washington here.
Dave: Well, and of course Clark [Bavin] was apart of that team. That was shortly after he
became…
Flick: It’s kind of interesting about Clark because Clark worked for refuges; I think he went
Davis/Merovka 16
to work for refuges and I got him to transfer to game management in our region I had
him assigned…I don’t know where I had him assigned.
Dave: Chicago I believe.
Flick: I believe it was. He was in Illinois I believe. Anyhow, he worked there for a while
and he decided he was gonna quit; he was going to go into business with his father-in-law,
in real estate business, and this was in Indiana I believe. He did, he resigned and
went to work with his father-in-law…
END OF SIDE 1, BEGINNING OF SIDE 2
(Tape 2)
Flick: …then one day the FBI came into my office and wanted some recommendations
for Clark [Bavin]. They understood that Clark used to work for me. I said, ‘yes,’
and they said, “He’s applied for a job with us and we’re doing a personnel
investigation on him.” Well, I had all the information on him, so I gave the
information that I had. As soon as the guy left the office I called Clark and asked
him if he was making an application for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He
said he was. I said, ‘Well, how about coming to work for the Fish and Wildlife
service?’ Well, he didn’t know, he’d have to think it over. The next day I drove
over to Indiana and called him again drove…(unintelligible)…talk to him, and
he changed his mind. He decided he would come to work for the Fish and
Wildlife Service. So we just put him to work. That’s how that happened.
Dave: You’re familiar with the successes that he’s had cause he’s been the chief of this
division I believe, longer than any other individual.
Flick: I don’t doubt it. He probably is.
Dave: Clark brought a lot of new ideas to…
Flick: He was a very capable young man.
Dave: …and then you had Wayne Sanders.
Flick: That’s right. Wayne was a former Iowa warden. We hired him and he went to work
down in Jefferson City, Missouri. He was a good officer. He done a real good job
Davis/Merovka 17
down there. They liked him there very much.
Dave: [Swede Linbaugh], he was an instructor. Remember him?
Flick: Yeah, [Linbaugh] was a former Minnesota warden. He worked for Minnesota for
several years. He took the examination and became eligible and then we hired him,
and he was one of the instructors, that’s right.
Dave: I’m tryin’ to think who…I don’t think [Wess Newcome] was an instructor.
Flick: No, he wasn’t.
Dave: I don’t know that…it may have been another one. I can’t remember right now.
Flick: I don’t know whether I got a picture here of the group or not, but I got pictures of
em’. Did you look at any of these pictures?
Dave: I looked at a few of them Flick. This meeting here in 1935, you weren’t working
then?
Flick: I wasn’t, no.
Dave: But I see Merovka there.
Flick: Yeah [Meroski’s] there. He always got into pictures.
Dave: Larry, at these meetings, how long would they last and what would happen at these
meetintgs?
Larry: We had a national meeting, a gathering of all agents nationally. It would be about a
week and we had a regular program set up for each day. We had people talking about
different subjects, for instance quite a bit of the discussion was centered on handling
your finance (we didn’t have much finance to handle)…(Flick interjects while looking
at some photographs).
Flick: Here’s a fine looking man.
Dave: I kinda recognize that fella.
(The tape is stopped, and restarted with minor audio equipment problems)
Davis/Merovka 18
Flick: The number of people that I hired that have gone on to better and bigger things in the
Fish and Wildlife Service.
Larry: That’s right. He’s one of em’. You were in Illinois weren’t you for a while?
Clark: Yeah.
Larry: What was your station?
Clark: Elgine.
Larry: Beg your pardon?
Clark: Elgine, near Chicago. I was startin’ to tell you a story about Chuck, and Flick may
remember it, but it may have been after you retired. I can’t remember for sure Flick
when it was, but [Ralph Vondane] was in Lauriette and he was enforcing the baiting
laws pretty strongly. There was a lady…I can’t remember all the details but there was
a lady there that was I think a congress woman from Illinois that was back here and
she was dating somebody that was…in any event, the politics came down that we had
to move [Vondane] because he was doin’ too good a job and the orders came down
that we had to move him some place. Chuck wrote a letter to the Secretary and sent it
out to one of his “old cronies” in Chicago. You know that’s where he worked as a kid
before he went to work for Wisconsin, and had them mail it to the Secretary. Of
course it had all the facts and really raised cane, and then of course it filtered down to
us to answer. Chuck had to answer this, you know, and of course it was mailed, he’d
written it originally. It was his own letter and they never did figure out that this
wasn’t some high power constituent in Chicago that was on [Vondane’s] side and
raisin’ hell about this congress woman threatened to expose all this stuff and every
thing like that. The upshot was we never moved [Vondane].
Larry: I was impressed with the statement you made that he was doing too good a job. That’s
what happens when they try and get em’ transferred.
I read that book “Game Warden Chesapeake Assignment,” and I don’t know how
much…there may be something in there that you might question, but the general
theme of the thing was that he worked under a helluva lot of pressure, being close to
the Washington office here. Every one of us that supervised federal game law, and
even for agents in the field always had somebody pressuring you about this, that and
the other. Calling you up and trying to call off the dogs on a case. I had a stock
answer for those people. I said, Mr. So and so, I said, ‘We have courts that have been
established to determine whether or not a person is innocent or guilty, and I want to
leave it up to the courts. It’s not my prerogative to decide whether a man is guilty or
Davis/Merovka 19
not. If you say this is what happened and the man didn’t do it, why fine. Let him go
to court and let the court decide whether he is guilty or not.’ I never remember one
case ever that went any farther than that cause we had good cases. We made it a point
to have good evidence before we’d try to take a case to court. That was one way that I
would get….Now, I just wouldn’t yield. The long time I served as an officer and
supervisor, I got to wondering many times, because I stepped on the toes of a lot of big
shots; I really did. I made it a point to do it with this philosophy in mind. People say,
“ If he can’t get by, well then I know damn well a little shot like me can’t get
buy,” and that was my philosophy in trying to get some of these people who were
wealthy and influential, political people who had a notion that they could do these
with impunity, violate the law with impunity. That’s the way I felt about it and I often
wonder how I got buy all those years without gettin’ booted out.
Flick: You probably should have been.
Larry: There’s one thought I have about it: I think that the average person whether your…
(unitelligible)…or not, has an admiration for people who are honest. I certainly hell
tried to be all my life. That’s the way my mother raised me to be and that’s the way
I’ve been.
Flick: Have you been honest with your wife all these years?
Larry: God damn, you don’t ask questions like that Flick! (Everyone laughs)
Clark: Not on the tape.
Larry: Oh, is that on?
Clark: Sure. We’ll have to back that up.
(The tape is backed up at this point, but not far enough to erase the above discussion)
Larry: …5:00 am and he sees it the first time after he drives down there to the hunt. That sort
of person I think has got a reason to complain if he gets arrested for shooting over
bait. I think maybe you’ve got to apprise the situation in view of what you learned
about what the conditions were at the time these people were arrested. It’s probably
true that some of ‘em get involved innocently in baiting. That kind of a case
happened to me many years ago when I was in Memphis, Tennessee. They did a lot
of dove baiting down there, and when it became illegal we made a lot of cases there. I
was workin’ there one day and it was in an area where in order to get out there to
where the doves where you had to cross a muddy place. So,…(unintelligible)…and all
of the hunters also had mud on their shoes. Well, I arrested this guy for shootin’ over
bait. He kept insisting that he was innocent. I said I don’t know with that bait being
Davis/Merovka 20
there. It was heavily baited, and I said, ‘Man, look there at your shoes.’ I said,
‘You can’t possibly bend over and pick up a dove you’ve killed without seeing all that
bait on your shoes.’ That shut him up, but that’s the sort of thing you have to compare.
They always plead innocent, and that’s a natural thing. Ordinarily people are not
gonna admit that they’re wrong about anything. That’s what happened with these
dove baiters all the time; they’re gonna contend that they didn’t know the place was
baited, and it presents a problem because those of us who are associated with law
enforcement know what the circumstances are and so we just “pooh pooh” the idea
ordinarily that this person is innocent. But, when he gets up there and testifies
before a congressional committee like that, he’s gonna have a sympathetic audience
to a large extent and that’s something that you’re probably…
Clark: Oh yeah. We’ll see that tomorrow. What are you doin’ David?
Dave: I’m just making copies of some of these things.
Larry: I made some extra copies of what I brought along here and you can have them. I
brought ‘em with the idea to give ‘em to you for whatever use you want to make of
‘em. Stuff that I’ve accumulated over the…Dave’s got bushels of stuff that I’ve
sent him.
Clark: Yeah, I understand you’ve been down there to New Orleans?
Larry: I was down there recently with my wife. I attended the National Wild Turkey Fair
Clark: Oh, you told me about that. You showed me a picture.
Larry: Got a beautiful plaque with my picture electroplated or something on it. It’s really
nice. I got six of those now. I don’t know why. Who the hell motivates people to
give those things to you, but…
Flick: I’ve got a turkey neck. Can I get in on it?
Larry: I do love to hunt turkeys, and since the…you know the quality of duck hunting out my
way has really deteriorated. Dave tells me it’s pretty damn bad in Louisiana now.
It’s nothin’ like it used to be. In my area one of the things I’d have to attribute that to
is the fact that there’s been such a big population explosion out our way. When I
moved to Albuquerque in 1940 the population was 35,000. Now it’s well over
300,000 and it keeps expanding. Lot of places where I used to hunt ducks, hell,
there’s mobile homes all around there. That’s a whole lot to do with the conditions
you hunt under now. I had a poor duck season last year and I profess to be a pretty
damn good duck hunter and duck caller. I can call anything that can be called. I
killed two ducks last year out of a three day hunt. That’s got to be pretty damns sad.
Davis/Merovka 21
Flick: You’re gittin’ to be a terrible shot Larry.
Larry: Well, one of our troubles there and any public shooting area is this damn “sky buses”
we call out my way. The minute these “sky buses” get out on the river every morning
that’s it. I mean every duck come by, I don’t care if he’s up there in the stratosphere
somebody’s gonna shoot at him. So you don’t have any chance to hunt him in a fair
way, bring him in, call him in and bring him in over the decoys, and that’s of course
disgusting as hell to a guy that knows how to hunt.
Flick: Takes the fun out of it.
Larry: That’s a population factor. Before we had all these people in there it was bad, but
wasn’t nothin’ as bad as it is now.
Flick: You had fewer people and more ducks.
Larry: That’s the truth. Now we got more people and fewer ducks.
Clark: Well that the case all over.
Flick: Right.
Larry: Anybody that sits where you are Clark is gonna have to take some heat. I’m sure
you’ve learned how to deal with it at least. You’ve been in there longer than any
director that I can recall, is that correct? Maybe ten years?
Clark: Eleven.
Larry: How many?
Clark: Eleven. Eleven this summer. I’m still surviving.
Flick: You’re doing damn good too.
Larry: If I remember right, you were recommended by Chuck.
Clark: Yeah, I think so.
Larry: I thought a helluva lot of Chuck Lawrence. Goddamn, I loved him like a brother, I
really did.
Clark: He was a fine man. No questions about that.
Davis/Merovka 22
Flick: He really was.
Larry: I spent a lot of time with Chuck. He and I went out to California to appraise this so-called
“legal” duck baiting program when it was first inaugurated in 1953 I
believe, or somewhere along in there. Chuck called Mr….(unintelligible)….wanted
to know if I could accompany him on that inspection out there. Said, “Hell Yeah.”
So he and I joined up together and we went out to…the state capital of California?
Clark: Sacramento.
Larry: Sacramento. Talked to…(unintelligible)… former director in Pennsylvania whose
dead now, Seth Gordon, and of course the way Seth put things to us he thought it was
necessary, the…(unintelligible)…were bad down there. He felt you know, put out
bait stations not closer than two hundred yards from where shooting would be done,
and I swear to God, I’m the man with the bait scoop. Chuck knew I was gonna be
aggressive with it and I was, goddammit. The federal wardens out there I’m
ashamed to say, goddammit had a very luke warm attitude to enforcing baiting
regulations. I guess that’s understandable because they worked with the state wardens
all the time. The state wardens said, “It’s O.K. We need baiting,” and so…you and I
don’t have the authority to fire an employee just like that, but Chuck came as damn
close to it as anybody ever did. He got so disgusted, so offended with the lack of
interest and aggressiveness this warden up there, one of our federal game agents…he
got mad as hell. I was with him, and he just flat told him he was gonna fire him and
by God the guy quit when I was still there. I can’t remember his name anymore.
Chuck was very disappointed at our record out there, and we had a poor record. I’m
gonna tell you this (I wouldn’t get on a witness stand to it): I was told, and I think it
was true, our agents were accepting valuable Christmas presents.
Flick: I think it’s a good deal like I told you last night Larry, that Leo [Laith] was as much to
blame for this as any of the rest of us.
Larry: Well, the regional directors were under heat too, you know. You know, it’s easy as
hell to be under civil service protection, but when you’re not under civil service
protection, by God, and you need to work, you need a job a lot of people…I don’t
know whether I would or not cause I wasn’t subjected to that kind of pressure cause
I had civil service protection. You don’t anymore do you?
Clark: Oh, I still do.
Larry: Do ya?
Clark: Yeah.
Davis/Merovka 23
Flick: Good.
Larry: I’m glad to hear that because I thought you were in that…
Clark: SES? No.
Larry: That’s fine…
Clark: it’s better this way.
Flick: Yeah, you bet.
Larry: It is true that if you don’t have civil service protection you’re more susceptible for
acceding to the pressure group than you are otherwise, and that’s understandable. A
man has a livin’ to make, course as a man of principal you’d have to push me pretty
damn far before I would yield to that sort of pressure.
Clark: The thing that’s really helped here has been Water Gate.
Larry: Who?
Clark: Watergate. After Watergate they just leave us alone completely.
Flick: That’s wonderful.
Larry: I’m sure you’re aware of this and that is: California has always had potent, as I can
remember, political influence, and Goddamn, they got it and they know how to use it.
and they use it. They damn well have used it in their efforts to get baiting eased.
Now, I was kind of curious: my records are mostly, as I indicated, up to maybe the
mid fifties. There was planners all outline in one of those bulletins as to what was
proposed to do to alleviate the damaged waterfowl in the Central Valley of California,
which is the main place where the birds depredate. One of the recommendations they
were gonna expand, agriculture program, put in more state and federal managed areas
and grow crops for these birds. Has that transpired? It’s all covered in that document
there, the Wetlands Program.
Clark: Yeah, I think somewhat. Most people agree Larry today that there’s no depredation
problems.
Larry: In California?
Clark: In the feeding clubs up in the central valley, there aren’t any, I mean the permits.
They’re no longer…
Davis/Merovka 24
Larry: Is that right?
Clark: Yeah. The only place they are is down around Salton Sea, in the southern part.
Larry: Oh, I didn’t know. Flick…(Clark and Larry talk at the same time. Unintelligible)…
If you haven’t been there you know that Sierra Madres range of mountain is on the
east side of California. On the west side you got your [Postal] mountains and then that
whole damn valley from Redding all the way down almost to Los Angeles is a big
broad agricultural area and that’s what they call the Central Valley. Well, you were
there, but anyway, that’s where the problems were always at.
Clark: Yeah, that’s where it initially started, up around North [Sadden] and so on…
Larry: Probably the Coachella Valley and Imperial is where they’re still depredated.
(Unintelligble)…a lot of letters done…(unintelligible)…used to be bad about
depredating down there.
Clark: But where the baiting clubs are now are all down in the Salton Sea area.
Larry: Well, I started sayin’ digress, and that is when I was with Chuck. Damn near
everyone of those blinds I went around was baited. I mean right by the damn blind.
Clark: Right up on the blind, huh?
Larry: Well, here’s what happened with one of ‘em that’s really clear in my mind. I went out
there and had the bait scoop, they called (at the time when I was down there) they
[myro mairs grain form], they called it [gyp form]. That was a California expression;
they called it [gyp form], but anyway, I’d scoop around there and come up with a
whole damn bunch of bait and bring it in, show it to Chuck and [Chet Lysart] and
everybody else, you know. So, we went to this club, I think it was in Orange County
which is down by Los Angeles and there was a lake that had been flooded seasonally
with what they used to call “dump water” down there, I think they call that class II
water also down there. But, anyway, I believe that water was available for duck club
use during the fall and winter months at $2.00 an acre foot, which is pretty damn
cheap. I wish I could buy some water $2.00 an acre foot…(unintelligible)…for down
near Mexico. But anyway,…(unintelligible)…shoot the next day. They shot I guess
three times a week, most of those clubs did. So they were gonna shoot the next day.
Bud Elder was the agent down there. I liked Bud personally, but he was another one
of them damn…(unintelligible)….He wasn’t doing much about enforcing the law. So
Chuck said, “Hell no, we’re not gonna let anybody sh….” Oh God, Bud was really
upset cause this bank person was a good friend of his, and Chuck said, “No damn way
are we gonna let him hunt tomorrow.” By God it made Bud unhappy as hell, but by
God that’s what happened. He went and told this bank president “no damn shootin’
over there tomorrow morning, and we’re gonna be over there looking down your
Davis/Merovka 25
throat,” but we weren’t. We thought that was sufficient notice to just tell him “No sir,
you’re not going down there until the bait’s cleared up.” Did you every read what
they call a [“Losteder”] Report?
Clark: Uh huh.
Larry: I haven’t seen that. I hear from him every Christmas. He writes me a long letter.
There was another report that was written on the baiting situation in California. Was
that the one…
Clark: There should have been three.
Larry: …where they decided it was not hurting the resource?
Clark: Well, that’s the last one.
Larry: That was the last one, wasn’t it?
Clark: Yeah.
Flick: Chuck wrote it.
Clark: Yeah, well there’s three. I think…I forgot. We’ve got ‘em on file here. I haven’t
looked at ‘em’s for so long I can’t remember…
Larry: I had that last one and I couldn’t find it. There was one where they made a study
when Greenwalt was…
Clark: That’s the one where they said it didn’t do any harm. You can’t hurt ‘em by shootin’
‘em. Have fun with ducks, remember that?
Larry: Who was on that committee?
Clark: Well Larry [John] was on it, a young guy by the…
Larry: Larry [John] was to be a good man.
Clark: He was a good man. He’s a good man.
Larry: Is he still with management?
Clark: Yeah. There’s a guy, he’s up in Boston too or we’d have him come over. There was a
guy from the duck place there at McGraw Edison, McGraw Duck Farm, raisin’…
Davis/Merovka 26
Larry: Oh yeah, in Illinois?
Clark: Yeah, well, there was a guy that manages that, whatever his name was, George
somethin’, and then there was a young college professor out of Missouri by the name
of Fredrickson, Lee Fredrickson, that kind of headed the study. He was sort of the
paid guy that did most of the study. His students did a lot of the data collection I
guess and stuff. And Bill [Uwey] was on the committee.
Larry: Bill was?
Clark: Yeah. And who else? Some guy from California that was with the state, Red, Red
somethin’, but he was a state waterefall biologist. He was on the committee. We had
pretty good representation, but you see the study is a little misleading. You have to be
very careful of what it says, I mean you have to read it very carefully because there’s
no question without the feed there wouldn’t be any ducks if they didn’t flood that
area…(unintelligible)….It’s just a desert where it is, around the Salton Sea, but the
issue was whether the birds were goin’ right to the gun. Well you know, after they’ve
been there a while they’d come in and circle around and land right in the feeding
station, and you know… they adopt their habits, I mean they killed some, but the
dumb ones. The smart ones learned how to survive, so you can make a study to show
most anything.
Larry: In one of those articles I brought, it mentioned they formed an ad-hock committee
to appraise this situation, but I don’t think we’re talkin’ about the same one. This one
came up with a firm recommendation against liberalizing the baiting regulation. Are
you familiar with that one?
Clark: Oh, that’s the one about sixty-nine or seven.
Larry: Yeah.
Clark: That’s a different committee. That was made up of some concerned sportsmen and
interested citizens. I think Larry [John] was on that one too as a matter of fact. It had
Judge McBride from California, had a number of lawyers, quite a few conservation-ists;
there’s about eight or ten, eleven, I think eleven people on that committee.
Larry: And, they had recommended against baiting.
Clark: Oh yeah. Sure. Very strongly. And there’s no intent, I don’t think, to liberalize the
regulations per say, it’s more about (right now) how do we keep the innocent hunter
from getting’ caught up in the otherwise, you know, where he can’t do anything to
detect the bait himself, you know, where it’s submerged and he goes out and…
Davis/Merovka 27
Larry: I think if I were on the witness stand like you may be, and that question was put to me
I would answer it in the fashion that being a law enforcement officer; if they have to
appraise it on the matter of facts and circumstances as to…if a guy could establish it
to your satisfaction and the court or the jury that he did not actually have any
knowledge of it then the verdict would probably go in his favor, however, he would
still object to being arraigned and tried on the issue of whether he was cognizant of
the presence of the bait or not. That is a sticky…
Clark: That’s the problem.
Larry: That’s the problem, yeah.
Clark: And even though we don’t…we just like, to my knowledge never prosecuted anybody
that really didn’t know, and I think the agents all used pretty good judgment…
Larry: I think that’s true.
Clark: …but still they’re technically liable for a penalty. I told old Ray he’s got to be careful
who he hunts with. He’s gonna go out and hunt with somebody that’s gonna bait and
set him up, why he ought not to hunt with that guy.
Larry: Have you told him that?
Clark: I told him that. He kind of grinned. “Well, they’re my friends,” and I said, ‘They’re
some kind of friends.’ They think they’d get away with it.
Larry: I honestly don’t think that there’s any pat answer to the damn question myself. On the
basis of my long experience with law enforcement there’s just one of those things that
like you say, it would largely lie with the judgment of the agent. I don’t know
whether it would be a good idea for you to require a report on the circumstances
before you authorize the charges be filed or not. The agent might feel he was being
muzzled. I don’t know that that’s a good approach either.
Clark: Well, supervisors generally require a report if it’s a commercial shoot, like you were
talking about where the guys goin’ in and payin’; it’s not a close personal relation-ship,
it’s a commercial kind of thing and if there’s no bait there no way this guy could
know, I mean hell, it could be any of us could of gone in there and paid the money for
the month and we wouldn’t know that it was paid. So, we go after the club owner
and maybe have the hunter show up as a witness or something, but they don’t get
prosecuted. It’s kind of a red herring.
Larry: Have you got fore knowledge as to what the likely discussion will be on the issue that
you just mentioned, what are you gonna do about the innocent hunter?
Davis/Merovka 28
Clark: I think that’s gonna be the line of questioning that we’re gonna get, and I think that the
NRA and some of them will come in with proposals to make us prove that the hunter
knew or should have known that it was baited. If you put that burden of proof on the
government it’s gonna be very difficult because the hunter’s just gonna say, “I
didn’t…,” and you’re gonna destroy, we believe and our statement will so state that
the hunter still needs in any kind of new scheme the hunter has to have responsibility
himself. You gotta hold him responsible to inquire, to examine, to make sure and to do
everything you can to police himself. If he doesn’t have any responsibility why then
the chances of catching the person puttin’ the bait out as you know is very difficult.
We know that and they know that and so maybe nothin’ will happen.
Larry: The fact that maybe, this I think would be a pertinent point, I think that the potential of
getting a quality hunt should alert the hunter to the fact that that quality hunting he’s
gonna get is probably a result of that place being baited, and I think that was a point
you might make.
Clark: That’s a good point Larry, and it’s the same as we have where these guides will take
somebody on a guaranteed hunt for a big trophy animal, you know pretty well it’s in
the past season or it’s in the national park or it’s some place where it shouldn’t be.
(Flick attempts to get a word in)
Larry: Clark, did you see that 60 Minutes program Sunday?
Clark: Oh yeah, I saw that. That didn’t look very good, did it?
Larry: No, it sure the hell didn’t. They’re gonna get a bad repercussion from that.
Clark: I think so. It didn’t look very good.
Larry: They always…I tell you the thing that really angered me more that anything in my
experience from the standpoint of criticism was that miserable The Guns of Autumn.
Boy, I sent a strong letter of protest to the commission, the Federal Communications
Commission, whatever it was. I sent a copy to this office and got a letter back about
it. Oh that really shook me up. They made a deliberate effort to make things
repugnant to public view.
(Clark turns the recording system off at this point)
END OF TAPE 2

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

INTERVIEW WITH FLICK DAVIS AND LARRY MEROVKA
IN
WASHINGTON DC, MARCH 27, 1984
BY
DAVE HALL
Tape 2, Side 1
Dave: March 27, 1984 and this is a discussion with Larry Merovka and Mr. Flick Davis in
Washington DC about some of their experiences while they were agents and regional
supervisors in the division of law enforcement. Larry, tell me about Allen vs.
Merovka. We’ve seen that in all of our manuals and everything, but there’s just a sort
of a short synopsis describing what happened. So what really happened out there?
Larry: Well Dave, that was quite an unusual case in that the state established a waterfowl
refuge down in the Rio Grande Valley along the river. Part of the refuge is a river
proper and part of it was on land owned by the state game fish department on which
a bountiful crop of corn had been raised that year, and also in the perimeter area the
state game commission decreed that certain privately owned land would be part of the
refuge. Well there was an attorney, [Plumber] if I remember, that was involved in
this here to the extent that this [Plumber] owned a small tract of land within the
exterior boundaries of this refuge. I think it was probably about eight or ten acres and
it was covered with big cottonwood trees, and the state game department went in and
cut down all of the corn in the fields there; chopped it up and spread corn all over the
ground. It was like a duck banquet area and the ducks and geese really poured into
this baited area. The state game department officers went down there on the opening
day of waterfowl season and seized some ducks and geese from two people who were
shooting in this small plot of privately owned land within the refuge, and issued
citations to these people for hunting on a refuge. Well, they took the seized birds and
put them in a cold storage plant and before the day was over this lawyer got the court
to issue a writ of replevin and they got the birds back. Then the state officers who
made the case and charged the men with hunting on a refuge came up to my office and
told me that these birds were being attracted into this baited place, which they
interpreted to be a violation of the federal regulations, which decreed that you weren’t
permitted to take waterfowl in a area where their being attracted to bait. So I went
down the next day to take a look at the situation and I agreed that it was a place that
I didn’t feel they could lawfully hunt. So, we had bureau post-it signs on hand and the
federal agent in charge there at Albuquerque and I, Bob Kinghorn, we went down and
posted the private land and put these people on notice that we interpreted the federal
regulation to prohibit that any hunting around the area where the birds are being
baited into. So, the lawyer then went into federal court in Albuquerque and applied
for a restraining order to restrain me from, and any men working under my supervision
from bothering anybody hunting on that, in that area where there was bait. So we
had a hearing…(unintelligible)…court and the judge ruled in my favor. Well then
Davis/Merovka 2
the case was appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Colorado, and
when it got up there the court overruled the U.S. District judge in Albuquerque and
decreed that in as much as the people involved as defendants in the case (they’re not
exactly defendants but close to it) that in as much as the state did debating that they
were not bound to abide by the applicable regulation. We went back and forth.
They’d win one round, we’d win the other round. Finally, I had retired by then and
was anxious to do some traveling with my wife and so I was anxious to get the case
settled, and so we settled out of court for a nominal sum of money, damages,
punitive damages and the government paid it because we were acting in accordance
with the instructions from our ranking officer, including the U.S. Soliciters Office…
ruled that we felt that we did right when we posted the area and so forth, but the
higher court didn’t agree with that so that’s what…
Dave: What did you have to pay?
Larry: I believe in the final analysis they levied a pretty good size judgment against us to
start with, seems to me the total may be around $10 – $12,000, but after that went
unappealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. Then that court decreed
that the amount…(unintelligible)…was excessive. The judgment was based on two
things: one of ‘em was the number of days that they were deprived of an opportunity
to hunt on there, and they valued so much per day for the fact that they had been
deprived of an opportunity to hunt there. Secondly, of course, they assessed punitive
damages against us. I remember one thing very distinctly that the attorney for the
plaintiffs stated that sort of teed me off pretty stormy and that was this: “Ladies and
gentlemen of the jury now this is an opportunity for you to get even with these feds
who are always imposing these onerous restrictions on ya. This is your chance to get
even with those….” He actually said that in court. That was really, I’d say, would be a
prejudice statement, but anyway that’s what happened. I admire…my retort to that I
can remember was this: I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury I claim to be a man
of high honor, a man of high integrity and I wouldn’t do anything wrong intentionally.
If there’s anything done improperly it was certainly not done with any malice.’ I
remember I got that lick in. I don’t guess it made a very good impression on the jury,
because still they ruled against us, but anyway that was an interesting case and if I had
it to do over again even though I had retired and I wanted to do some traveling with
my wife, and I had planned to do some traveling after I had retired, we weren’t able to
do it on account of this case pending in court. Finally, I got tired of it and I said,
‘let’s settle out of court.’ So you asked how much my part was? I believe my part in
the final analysis was $500, in which I was reimbursed promptly. Chuck Lawrence in
Washington always did a wonderful job of getting that thing facilitated, and I got my
money back in a very short period of time. It was an interesting case and I personally
feel that we were right. The law decreed, it didn’t say whether you knew that bait was
put out there or not. It was there and attracting the birds; you were not permitted to
hunt around it. Well, that isn’t what the court ruled. If I had it to do over again, even
Davis/Merovka 3
though I wanted to get things settled so I could do some traveling, I would of appealed
the U.S. Supreme Court…(unintelligible)…and review. I’m sorry now that that
wasn’t done because I still feel that goin’ to that higher tribunal that we woulda got a
favorable ruling on that.
Dave: Flick, I can remember when I was a young agent you always seemed to have a group
of agents around you, not only loyal but there was really a “Esprit De Corps,” as it
was in all the regions. Larry Merovka had his guys, Bill Davis had his guys, but they
all worked together. I remember, the first time I believe I ever met you, you were out
on Sunday afternoon and had a pair of blue shorts on; I’ll never forget that, out there
giving out the banding gear at Fort Snelling I saw all the crews goin’ into Canada.
They’d stop off in Minnesota on the way up to Canada and ol’ Flick was out there
givin’ the guys the last instructions and givin’ out the equipment that was stored
there.
Flick: Well, we always stored the gear at Fort Snelling. Fort Snelling was disbanded you
know; they used to be quite an active military post. The buildings were still there so
they assigned a couple of buildings to the Fish and Wildlife Service for storage
facilities and we used one of the buildings. When they’d come from banding why
they’d always bring their gear to Fort Snelling and we’d store it there, and in as much
as Minnesota was sort of on the way to Canada for the banding work, they’d stop in
there and leave it. And when they’d get ready to go back to banding they’d stop by
and pick it up and get going.
Dave: Flick, I went up there seven years, some guys went a lot longer than I did, but there
was something about that Canadian assignment that was very rough work, but at the
same time it gave the agents the ability from Maine to Alaska to Minnesota to Florida
to New Mexico to be together, and work together. Also, I felt very comfortable to
come back home and talk about what was going on on the breeding ground from
having been there. In a way I hate to see that we still do some of that.
Flick: It was a real wonderful training ground we always thought. As a matter of fact we in
region three, we were always willing and anxious to delegate agents to different
assignments and different parts of the country. We thought it was good training for
them. One of the fine things that happened to us in Canada as far as the banding
work was concerned - - we developed a wonderful working relationship with the
Canadian authorities.
Dave: We really did. I was amazed. The mounted police I met in Manitoba, Saskatchewan
and Alberta knew most of our agents there along the border there by name.
Flick: Yes, that’s right.
Davis/Merovka 4
Dave: It was amazing also that even their families associated with each other, back and forth
across the border.
Flick: That’s right.
Dave: It was obvious that there was an outstanding relationship between the two agencies
and the two countries.
Flick: It was fortunate for me that I was able to cooperate with the mounted police and I
made several trips to Hudson Bay with mounted police. We were delegated by the
Washington office to go up there help them with enforcement work to give ‘em
some ideas on how our enforcement worked out as far as waterfowl was concerned.
In Canada the Northwest mounted police were the same as the federal officers. They
enforced the waterfowl regulations. They enforced all the regulations, course they
enforced the waterfowl regulations also.
Dave: Well Flick digress a little bit. How about tellin’ me (I never have asked you this) how
You got interested in fish and wildlife law enforcement. When you started I know it
Was in Iowa, but I’d like to know about that.
Flick: I suppose I developed a love for wildlife by my father. I can remember when he’d
never go duck hunting without taking me along…[we] hunted ducks in the spring
of the year then. He would always take me along with him. Other times there’d be
people want him to go hunting, and he’d say, “Well, I’ll get the kid and we’ll go.” I
suppose I developed a love for wildlife then. I can remember getting in the top of
haystacks. We used to…down in the river bottoms they’d have hay, they’d cut hay
and stack it up. Dad and I would climb up on a haystack and get in the haystacks,
and the ducks would be flying low and flying all over. We’d just set in the hay-stack
and he’d shoot ‘em out of the blind that we had. I suppose I developed a love
for wildlife…
Dave: Where would that have been? What county was that in?
Flick: Butler County.
Dave: What river was that?
Flick: That’ve been the Iowa, north branch of the Iowa.
Dave: In those years Flick, were there a lot of waterfowl?
Flick: Yeah, there was lots of waterfowl. Every puddle would have waterfowl in it. I can
remember after I went to work for the Iowa Conservation Department that we were
Davis/Merovka 6
assigned to the Missouri River for the flight of waterfowl up the river, and it would
last for six days sometimes. That flight was continuous day and night. They would
stop if it was raining…(unintelligible)…they’d stop over town and we’d stay down in
Iowa. They’d stop over town and make such a racket the people couldn’t sleep and
they’d raise the dickens with trying to turn the lights off so that they’d move on.
They were attracted by the lights of the city, and these geese, this was mostly blue and
snow geese and ducks that would come up the river. The river then, the Missouri
river, the bars were sand, they had red willows growing on them. The birds would
roost on the bars at night and at about eight in the morning they’d take off and go out
into the fields to feed, and usually they’d hit picker picked corn fields. That was one
of the things that developed waterfowl problems in Iowa, particularly in Iowa, was the
mechanical corn picker because they shelled lots of corn and left con in the fields.
Dave: They weren’t too efficient in those days and they left a lot of grain.
Flick: Well yeah, they’d shell off corn and there’d be shelled corn that’d being laying in the
field. Then it would rain; it would be wet and sloppy in little puddles all over.
Dave: It’s hard for people in my generation Flick to understand what you just said because
I thought I had seen the good years in the fifties; there was quite a few ducks. In Iowa
today the duck hunting is really not that good, according to my friends that hunt there.
What years would that of been when you were a kid with your father?
Flick: I was born in nineteen hundred and three and I suppose I was about seven, eight years
old then.
Dave: So it would have been prior to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, like I say, when the
spring…(unintelligible).
Flick: Yeah, right.
Dave: In those years there weren’t that many hunters were there?
Flick: No. Very few, very few hunters.
Dave: If someone asked you Flick what your opinion of what’s happened to our waterfowl,
I’d just like to know what your reaction would be.
Flick: Well of course I’ve seen a decrease as the years go on; there’s less waterfowl all the
time seems to me.
Dave: Would you say it’s a multiple of reasons or any one particular reason? How would
you see it?
Davis/Merovka 7
Flick: Oh yes I’m sure there’s been several reasons for it. I think one species of bird that
hasn’t been bothered too bad is the Canada geese in the Midwest. That’s the region
that I used to work. The Canada geese has probably increased in numbers. It used
to be when I was a kid if someone killed a Canada goose they’d get their picture
in the paper and get a big story about it. Just one Canada goose would be dead. Now
it’s no problem at all; they kill Canada geese all the time during the season. They got
‘em there all summer as a matter of fact.
Dave: That’s ironic too to me. My first reaction to that is that the breeding grounds for the
Canada goose is still in pretty good shape, and we’ve probably regulated the kill on
the Canada geese better than we have on any other bird, so it shows to me that there’s
two things: overshooting, over harvest and loss of breeding grounds and wintering
grounds also. There’s the tendency on some people’s part to de-emphasize the
importance of controlling the kill, over shooting, over harvest or whatever. If I were
to ask you what would of happened if there hadn’t of been Bill Davis’, Larry
Merovka’s and Flick Davis, and even going back to Ray Holland (a lot of the guys
that started us out)? Do you think we’d still be shooting any waterfowl today?
Flick: No, I doubt it.
Dave: Do you think law enforcement has had an impact on…?
Flick: I’m sure it has. I’m sure it has.
Dave: I feel the same way, of course I came along many years after you did. I think that law
enforcement is not the only answer, but certainly it’s had more of a part in
managing these resources than some people realize.
Flick: That’s true. I think one of the bad things that our Bureau has done is knock down corn
and feed on the refuge, concentrating birds on the refuge and holding them there for
such long periods of time.
Dave: When did you first see duck baiting? Where was it?
Flick: Jesus, I don’t know…(long pause)….I don’t know where I first saw it. I don’t
remember.
Dave: Do you remember what period it would have been in?
Flick: It would have been shortly after I went to work for the Bureau. I was a U.S. deputy
game warden for four years and then took the civil service examination for game
management agent, U.S. game warden, and in 1934 I received…1939 I received an
Davis/Merovka 8
appointment, then I worked steadily from then on. I don’t recall when I saw the first
baiting, whether it was while I was a U.S. deputy game warden.
Dave: Did you ever witness the dry pin slaughter holes in Illinois that they refer to as “dry
pin slaughter [pens],” or whatever (they got good names for ‘em)?
Flick: No, as a matter of fact I’ve never had much experience with baiting in Illinois that I
can recall. If I had I don’t recall.
Dave: Did you ever see any baiting in Iowa while you were a state wildlife officer there?
Flick: Yes, there was baiting going on along the Missouri River.
Dave: That would have been prior to 1939…
Flick: Yeah.
Dave: …(unintelligible)…1934 to 1939?
Flick: Yeah.
Dave: What was your biggest problem once you became an agent as far as doing your job?
What were the things that you were most involved in?
Flick: Over limits I suppose. Out of season, had a lot of out of season hunting, and that was
true throughout the region. We had eleven states in the Midwest.
Dave: In those years transportation was much more difficult than it is today. Now how did
you guys get together and work together and coordinate your activities? There
weren’t FTS telephones. What did you do in those days if you wanted to get some
word to an agent or try to get up a detail?
Flick: Well, we’d us a telephone I suppose, if one was available. If one wasn’t, I don’t
know. I don’t recall.
Dave: When you went to work in Iowa, or when you were working as a state agent in Iowa
was there close cooperation between the state and federal agencies?
Flick: Yes. Real close. We always had good relations. I recall when I went to work for the
Bureau as a game management agent I had a Ford automobile and a [Old Town] canoe
with…(unintelligible)…on it, and a carrier on the top of it and I’d follow the birds in
the spring of the year starting in Iowa; when I first started out I started in Iowa, follow
the birds on up to the Canadian line then come back after…I’d stay about thirty days
Davis/Merovka 9
along the Canadian line, then come back to Iowa and go to St. Louis and check furs in
fur houses down there for illegal shipment of furs. The fur companies had to report
all the furs that they bought, and we’d check their invoices and see if they were
shipping in furs from Iowa or Illinois or Missouri or some place like that. Then we’d
work on that for about two or three months usually. In St. Louis while it was hot and
sticky; really we just didn’t like that very well. Then we’d take out when the birds
started back; we’d start at the Canadian line and go to the Gulf of Mexico, follow ‘em
all the way down. I usually came back then after the season was over in Louisiana or
where ever we were working on the Gulf. We’d worked there ‘til after the season for
a month or so, then I’d always come back to Missouri. I’d worked at Sikeston,
Missouri, headquarters there, and worked out of there ‘til the birds started back in the
spring of the year, then I’d go on up to the Canadian line again.
Dave: The camaraderie in between the agents north, south, east and west in this organization
is always…
Flick: Oh it was great. It was wonderful. We had wonderful cooperation from them.
Dave: I guess being able to work together as much as you did, even though transportation
was kind of difficult compared to today. You worked from Louisiana to the Canadian
border?
Flick: That’s right.
Dave: Flick, tell me if you remember some of the agents, the older agents that were working
when you came on board, some of them that you can remember.
Flick: Well, there was Leo Childers in South Dakota and Burt [Shafer]; he worked out of
Wisconsin, Minnesota. And, Ed Carter in Wisconsin, Curtis Allen in Missouri, Harry
[Barmire] in St. Louis, John Perry who worked out of the…what’s that station there…
Dave: Peoria? He was in Peoria at one time.
Flick: Yeah, he worked out of Peoria, but he also was in Memphis.
Dave: I want to talk later with you and Larry Merovka both about him. He must have been
the first undercover officer this organization had.
Flick: Yeah, I think so.
Dave: I’d like to talk to you guys about that on a special part of the tape. What about Ray
Davis/Merovka 10
Holland? Did you ever know Ray Holland?
Flick: No I never knew him. He was before my time.
Dave: You knew Ernie Swift.
Flick: Oh, very well. A very dear friend of mine.
Dave: He was an example, in my opinion, of a man who understood the importance of law
enforcement.
Flick: Oh he sure did. He was the director of the Wisconsin Department of Conservation.
Dave: He later came to Washington.
Flick: Yes. Assistant director I believe. Yeah, he was a great friend of mine.
Dave: Over the years Flick I know that you’ve been able to carry on a very firm, strong law
enforcement program in all the states that you supervised, but one of the things that
always impressed me that you were well thought of even among the violators, so to
speak. I guess it was the way you conducted yourself.
Flick: Well, I don’t know. One of our philosophies was that we’d always…if a man violated
the law the first thing we’d do was ask ourselves, “Does the evidence we have support
The case” that we were about to make against the man? If we don’t think it has the
evidence why, we don’t prosecute the case. But, in no instance do you ever let a man
go without takin’ him to court, if he’s violated and you think the evidence will support
your charges. If he’s to be relieved in any way it will be up to the judge to make the
relief, not you, and we always told our agents that, and…(unintelligible)…
we never did let anyone go. If we thought they were in violation of the law and we
could prosecute ‘em, we’d take ‘em to the court and tell the court the truth about the
case. If it was a minor thing, why we’d tell the court so and leave the court to decide
the penalty, if there was to be a penalty.
Dave: Well in those years public awareness, public acceptance of some of the new federal
laws…wasn’t easy out there was it?
Flick: No, but I think they had more respect for the federal law then they had for the state
laws generally.
Dave: Why did you decide to become a federal agent? I’m sure you were in your home state
and I’m sure you love Iowa and everything; why did you decide to be a U.S. Fish and
Wildlife agent knowing you were gonna probably have to leave your home state and
Davis/Merovka 11
travel and move?
Flick: Well, as a U.S. deputy game warden I became very well acquainted with Jess
Thompson, who was an agent in Iowa at that time. I knew Jess and worked with
Him very closely, and he worked with me. I don’t’ know, I just liked his attitude and
the philosophy that he had, and I thought it would be a good thing for me. I was a
state game warden then and had been for six years, so I tried to get a federal job and
made it.
Dave: Well Flick, there’s never been any serious corruption what so ever in this organization
since the day it started has there?
Flick: Not that I know of.
Dave: Never been any bad publicity that relates to the way agents over all conduct
themselves and do their job. Do you think that has anything to do with the public and
the state? Generally, the states attitude to it, and the public about…(Dave is
interrupted by loud noises from the audio equipment)…. O.K. Larry. We’re gonna
talk about John Perry. He was from everything I can read and hear, he was the guy
that sort of started doing the first undercover work. Do you remember, how’d that get
started and what did they do?
Larry: This is Larry Merovka talkin’. I met John Perry at one of the annual spring get-togethers
that we had in St. Louis. You see, Missouri and Illinois were two die-hard
states with respect to observance of the decree against hunting waterfowl on our...
(unintelligible)…to the nesting ground in the spring of the year. For quite a long time
after the Migratory Bird Treaty Act regulation became effective we concentrated our
enforcement efforts in the spring of the year in Missouri and Illinois. We always got
together to formulate plans for our spring patrols in St. Louis, Missouri, and that’s
where I met John Perry. John Perry was a native of Nashville, Tennessee. Big, tall
handsome man, quite articulate, real nice personality, and with a strong sense of
humor. He and I hit it off real well right after I met up with him. One of the things
for which John was quite noted was this: he conducted the first undercover operation
that I am aware of against market hunting, and at the time when John was stationed
in Peoria, Illinois. He got the idea of posing as a alcoholic bum who supported his
booze habit and general sustenance by buying and selling wild ducks. He grew a
beard and had on dirty cloths (a typical seedy lookin’ character; he looked like a
typical skid row bum). He went down on the Illinois river; he knew by reputation who
was doing the market hunting and he started buying ducks from these people and
brought ‘em back and put ‘em in storage and marked ‘em for evidence in Peoria. In
time of course all these people were arrested, and when they came into federal court
they were absolutely amazed; John had been dressed up, slicked up, shaved up, looked
like a bank, Wall Street lawyer. And they just couldn’t hardly believe it when they
Davis/Merovka 12
saw John appearing in that fashion. He was a handsome lookin’ man.
Flick: Do you have any pictures in his…
Dave: I got only one. Do you have some pictures of him?
Flick: I’ve got one. I didn’t bring it with me I don’t think.
Dave: Maybe some time…
Flick: I want you to come by my place. I’m living all alone. I got plenty of room. You can
come and stay with me and I’ll turn you lose in the basement. I got all the books and
every damn thing down there you can imagine.
Dave: Flick, did John Perry, was he workin’ when you were working in that region?
Flick: Yeah.
Dave: You got to know him real well.
Flick: Well I knew him. I didn’t know him as well as Larry did, but I knew him. [Barmier]
was another.
Dave: Did anybody ever, I know at that time there probably wasn’t any discussion about it,
but I wonder where he came up with the idea to work undercover because see, there
wasn’t any law enforcement agencies then that had any undercover. This was
maybe some of the first undercover…
Larry: As far as I know I’m gonna give 100% credit for that to John Perry. I don’t know
anybody else that had anything to do with it. I think he just conceived the idea…he
was stationed in…you were asking a while ago Flick as to where he was head-quartered.
Later on he was headquartered in Wisconsin and I have his address there
in my files somewhere. He finally wound up coming back into to Memphis,
Tennessee, where he started, before he retired. I don’t remember how long he’s been
dead, but I thought a lot of John Perry. He was a fine officer and dedicated like most
all the federal agents I ever met. I never saw a finer bunch of law enforcement
officers than our corps of federal game law. They had a fine camaraderie, fine
relationship, wonderful cooperation between the agents and practically no
jealously that I ever was aware of. I was real happy, and real happy to say now
that I never found a finer bunch of men than the federal game warden. I’ll say
this: if there ever was an incorruptible corps of federal law enforcement officers
it certainly was the federal game agent. They were just as incorruptible as were
the FBI. They were just a fine corps of men and I’m real proud to say at this time that
Davis/Merovka 13
I’m very proud to have been one of ‘em. I really am.
Dave: Well you know Larry it’s quite obvious the early court decision, and this is before
wildlife crimes were felt as serious as they are today because we’ve seen such a
dwindling population, but it was quite obvious to me from reading these court
decisions that our guys conducted themselves, like Flick said, “[in] a very professional
way,” because we had almost a consistent winner in the courts. We hardly ever lost
any cases, and the ones that were contested only the circuit and even in the Supreme
court we hardly ever lost a case. That was a credit to the theory that you put forward
Flick, about don’t take a man to court unless you’ve got all the evidence. Once you
build that kind of reputation in the federal courts, it’s apparent that the judges from
one part of the country to another talk to each other and I think our agents through the
years have held…
Larry: Have made a difference. I’m sure of that. Let me interject a thought here along the
line of your discussion, and that is this: one of the reasons we were able to be quite
professional without all the formal training you get now days is this: we had a man
there that wrote…(unintelligible)…federal game law enforcement by the name of
Frank Calaghan, and I knew him real well. He and I were good friends. He handled
all of the cases that came into the Washington office and whenever there had to be
any sort of a liaison of any kind with the courts he handled it before we had (at that
time) a lawyer for the agency. He was a fella that instilled the concept that officers
should be incorruptible. He was one of the people certainly did that. He was a close
friend of mine. I thought an awful lot of this guy. He was here in the Washington
office and he handled all the caseloads. Everything that had to do with law
enforcement, he was the one that…he might have had a supervisor over him, but
actually he was the one that did most of the work.
Dave: What was his title, Larry? Do you remember?
Larry: Well, really, I don’t recall what it was…
Dave: But he worked under several chiefs then?
Larry: Oh yeah. I don’t think he died in office, I think he died after he retired.
Flick: He did. He died after he retired.
Larry: Yeah, I’m quite sure. Flick will verify this: he was just a fine gentleman wasn’t he?
Flick: Oh yes.
Larry: He was a man that I would say inspired, instilled me to do a good job more than
Davis/Merovka 14
any individual that I was associated with in the early days. He did that with
everybody. He was the one that presided over all aspects of discussions of the
enforcement of the Federal government. Every time we had a conference, Mr.
Callahan was the man that stood up there and answered the questions and suggested
how we ought to operate and he pointed out pitfalls of law enforcement, which of
course everybody knows there’s quite a few of them, particularly in the field of search
and seizure. We got fine inspiration from him. I would recognize him as one of the
outstanding employees in the early days of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Dave: Flick, Larry mentioned training and if I remember (and I do remember) up in region 3
(we used to refer to them as “Flick’s boys”) that you got together a team of instructors
and went around putting on law enforcement training.
Flick: That’s right.
Dave: To this day several of us are probably in this position because of the influence that
that training had on us when I was in another position, but at that time it was hard
to get into the law enforcement because you had to have at least three years of
conservation law enforcement experience and I chose to come in from the federal
system through refuges. Some of the guys came in through the state agencies, which
was just as good. I’m interested to know how you decided or how all that happened?
How did you put together that team of agents and put together that training?
Flick: Well I don’t know, but I think we started out with the idea that we had to have men
that had good backgrounds in wildlife management or enforcement. It got to the
point where we were hiring only people that had degrees in wildlife management or
enforcement of some kind. It wasn’t too easy to come by really. So we decided that
we’d have a training school, we’d run a training school for our people that we
already had that hadn’t had some of that background. I think that’s the way it started
out probably.
Dave: But you recognized the need for training men, and it went over pretty well.
Flick: We discussed it with the Washington office and they said, “Go ahead, see what you
can do with it.” So, we went ahead then and started out…
Dave: What you did, you knew your men well enough to know the expertise that each one of
them had in various areas.
Flick: That’s right.
Dave: We might talk about a few of them. Like Chuck [Nippen] I don’t guess anyone knew
more about waterfowl more than Chuck [Nippen].
Davis/Merovka 15
Flick: No, Chuck…(unintelligible).
Dave: He became an expert photographer and a waterfowl identifier. He was one of the first
guys to realize that just looking at [study skins] was not good enough. You had to
look
at em’ in the air, on the water…
Flick: Chuck worked for the, when we hired him, he worked for the Ohio Conservation
Department as a state warden in Ohio. We hired him and he’d taken the examination
and became eligible to us, so we hired him. I put him in Minnesota up at [Fumigee],
Minnesota, and he was there for about three or four months and he came down one
day…(unintelligible)… wanted to know if he could come in the office, and I said,
“Sure, come on in.” So he came in and said he was gonna resign, that he didn’t like
the station at [Fumigee], and I said well hell we’ll try and get you another station if
you don’t like that up there. “No,” he said, “I think I’m [gonna] resign.” I tried to talk
him out of it, but I wasn’t able to do it. So, he did resign and he went back to Ohio
and he was a commercial photographer. He had a business of his own there and had a
building that the business was in. His brother-in-law operated the business while
Chuck was gone. After about a year I think, I stopped over to see him. I used to keep
in touch with him, but I went to see him one time and talk to him about coming to
work for the Fish and Wildlife Service. He said, he didn’t know he’d have to take the
examination, to see if he could get the examination. So I called the civil service
outfit in our region and asked them about it, and they said he had three years in which
to take advantage of that. If he’d retire, why he could still use his passing grade on
the civil service examination, so I hired him again. I don’t remember where he went
to work then.
Dave: But you had Joe Hopkins as one of your instructors.
Flick: Yeah, Joe Hopkins was an Iowa boy. He was a supervisor of agents out in
[Estherville], Iowa. I knew Joe very well. He was a fine man. As a matter of fact,
when Joe moved up to [Curtis Falls] in our region from Illinois he told me he wanted
to transfer to the [Curtis Falls]. I told him I was gonna retire before long and I wanted
to recommend him to take my job when I retired, and so he went on up the [Fergus
Falls] and he built a house up there and was there about three or four years I guess.
Then, they wanted someone to come to Washington and they asked me if I had a man
that would be suitable for the job, and I recommended Joe for it. That’s how Joe
came into Washington here.
Dave: Well, and of course Clark [Bavin] was apart of that team. That was shortly after he
became…
Flick: It’s kind of interesting about Clark because Clark worked for refuges; I think he went
Davis/Merovka 16
to work for refuges and I got him to transfer to game management in our region I had
him assigned…I don’t know where I had him assigned.
Dave: Chicago I believe.
Flick: I believe it was. He was in Illinois I believe. Anyhow, he worked there for a while
and he decided he was gonna quit; he was going to go into business with his father-in-law,
in real estate business, and this was in Indiana I believe. He did, he resigned and
went to work with his father-in-law…
END OF SIDE 1, BEGINNING OF SIDE 2
(Tape 2)
Flick: …then one day the FBI came into my office and wanted some recommendations
for Clark [Bavin]. They understood that Clark used to work for me. I said, ‘yes,’
and they said, “He’s applied for a job with us and we’re doing a personnel
investigation on him.” Well, I had all the information on him, so I gave the
information that I had. As soon as the guy left the office I called Clark and asked
him if he was making an application for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He
said he was. I said, ‘Well, how about coming to work for the Fish and Wildlife
service?’ Well, he didn’t know, he’d have to think it over. The next day I drove
over to Indiana and called him again drove…(unintelligible)…talk to him, and
he changed his mind. He decided he would come to work for the Fish and
Wildlife Service. So we just put him to work. That’s how that happened.
Dave: You’re familiar with the successes that he’s had cause he’s been the chief of this
division I believe, longer than any other individual.
Flick: I don’t doubt it. He probably is.
Dave: Clark brought a lot of new ideas to…
Flick: He was a very capable young man.
Dave: …and then you had Wayne Sanders.
Flick: That’s right. Wayne was a former Iowa warden. We hired him and he went to work
down in Jefferson City, Missouri. He was a good officer. He done a real good job
Davis/Merovka 17
down there. They liked him there very much.
Dave: [Swede Linbaugh], he was an instructor. Remember him?
Flick: Yeah, [Linbaugh] was a former Minnesota warden. He worked for Minnesota for
several years. He took the examination and became eligible and then we hired him,
and he was one of the instructors, that’s right.
Dave: I’m tryin’ to think who…I don’t think [Wess Newcome] was an instructor.
Flick: No, he wasn’t.
Dave: I don’t know that…it may have been another one. I can’t remember right now.
Flick: I don’t know whether I got a picture here of the group or not, but I got pictures of
em’. Did you look at any of these pictures?
Dave: I looked at a few of them Flick. This meeting here in 1935, you weren’t working
then?
Flick: I wasn’t, no.
Dave: But I see Merovka there.
Flick: Yeah [Meroski’s] there. He always got into pictures.
Dave: Larry, at these meetings, how long would they last and what would happen at these
meetintgs?
Larry: We had a national meeting, a gathering of all agents nationally. It would be about a
week and we had a regular program set up for each day. We had people talking about
different subjects, for instance quite a bit of the discussion was centered on handling
your finance (we didn’t have much finance to handle)…(Flick interjects while looking
at some photographs).
Flick: Here’s a fine looking man.
Dave: I kinda recognize that fella.
(The tape is stopped, and restarted with minor audio equipment problems)
Davis/Merovka 18
Flick: The number of people that I hired that have gone on to better and bigger things in the
Fish and Wildlife Service.
Larry: That’s right. He’s one of em’. You were in Illinois weren’t you for a while?
Clark: Yeah.
Larry: What was your station?
Clark: Elgine.
Larry: Beg your pardon?
Clark: Elgine, near Chicago. I was startin’ to tell you a story about Chuck, and Flick may
remember it, but it may have been after you retired. I can’t remember for sure Flick
when it was, but [Ralph Vondane] was in Lauriette and he was enforcing the baiting
laws pretty strongly. There was a lady…I can’t remember all the details but there was
a lady there that was I think a congress woman from Illinois that was back here and
she was dating somebody that was…in any event, the politics came down that we had
to move [Vondane] because he was doin’ too good a job and the orders came down
that we had to move him some place. Chuck wrote a letter to the Secretary and sent it
out to one of his “old cronies” in Chicago. You know that’s where he worked as a kid
before he went to work for Wisconsin, and had them mail it to the Secretary. Of
course it had all the facts and really raised cane, and then of course it filtered down to
us to answer. Chuck had to answer this, you know, and of course it was mailed, he’d
written it originally. It was his own letter and they never did figure out that this
wasn’t some high power constituent in Chicago that was on [Vondane’s] side and
raisin’ hell about this congress woman threatened to expose all this stuff and every
thing like that. The upshot was we never moved [Vondane].
Larry: I was impressed with the statement you made that he was doing too good a job. That’s
what happens when they try and get em’ transferred.
I read that book “Game Warden Chesapeake Assignment,” and I don’t know how
much…there may be something in there that you might question, but the general
theme of the thing was that he worked under a helluva lot of pressure, being close to
the Washington office here. Every one of us that supervised federal game law, and
even for agents in the field always had somebody pressuring you about this, that and
the other. Calling you up and trying to call off the dogs on a case. I had a stock
answer for those people. I said, Mr. So and so, I said, ‘We have courts that have been
established to determine whether or not a person is innocent or guilty, and I want to
leave it up to the courts. It’s not my prerogative to decide whether a man is guilty or
Davis/Merovka 19
not. If you say this is what happened and the man didn’t do it, why fine. Let him go
to court and let the court decide whether he is guilty or not.’ I never remember one
case ever that went any farther than that cause we had good cases. We made it a point
to have good evidence before we’d try to take a case to court. That was one way that I
would get….Now, I just wouldn’t yield. The long time I served as an officer and
supervisor, I got to wondering many times, because I stepped on the toes of a lot of big
shots; I really did. I made it a point to do it with this philosophy in mind. People say,
“ If he can’t get by, well then I know damn well a little shot like me can’t get
buy,” and that was my philosophy in trying to get some of these people who were
wealthy and influential, political people who had a notion that they could do these
with impunity, violate the law with impunity. That’s the way I felt about it and I often
wonder how I got buy all those years without gettin’ booted out.
Flick: You probably should have been.
Larry: There’s one thought I have about it: I think that the average person whether your…
(unitelligible)…or not, has an admiration for people who are honest. I certainly hell
tried to be all my life. That’s the way my mother raised me to be and that’s the way
I’ve been.
Flick: Have you been honest with your wife all these years?
Larry: God damn, you don’t ask questions like that Flick! (Everyone laughs)
Clark: Not on the tape.
Larry: Oh, is that on?
Clark: Sure. We’ll have to back that up.
(The tape is backed up at this point, but not far enough to erase the above discussion)
Larry: …5:00 am and he sees it the first time after he drives down there to the hunt. That sort
of person I think has got a reason to complain if he gets arrested for shooting over
bait. I think maybe you’ve got to apprise the situation in view of what you learned
about what the conditions were at the time these people were arrested. It’s probably
true that some of ‘em get involved innocently in baiting. That kind of a case
happened to me many years ago when I was in Memphis, Tennessee. They did a lot
of dove baiting down there, and when it became illegal we made a lot of cases there. I
was workin’ there one day and it was in an area where in order to get out there to
where the doves where you had to cross a muddy place. So,…(unintelligible)…and all
of the hunters also had mud on their shoes. Well, I arrested this guy for shootin’ over
bait. He kept insisting that he was innocent. I said I don’t know with that bait being
Davis/Merovka 20
there. It was heavily baited, and I said, ‘Man, look there at your shoes.’ I said,
‘You can’t possibly bend over and pick up a dove you’ve killed without seeing all that
bait on your shoes.’ That shut him up, but that’s the sort of thing you have to compare.
They always plead innocent, and that’s a natural thing. Ordinarily people are not
gonna admit that they’re wrong about anything. That’s what happened with these
dove baiters all the time; they’re gonna contend that they didn’t know the place was
baited, and it presents a problem because those of us who are associated with law
enforcement know what the circumstances are and so we just “pooh pooh” the idea
ordinarily that this person is innocent. But, when he gets up there and testifies
before a congressional committee like that, he’s gonna have a sympathetic audience
to a large extent and that’s something that you’re probably…
Clark: Oh yeah. We’ll see that tomorrow. What are you doin’ David?
Dave: I’m just making copies of some of these things.
Larry: I made some extra copies of what I brought along here and you can have them. I
brought ‘em with the idea to give ‘em to you for whatever use you want to make of
‘em. Stuff that I’ve accumulated over the…Dave’s got bushels of stuff that I’ve
sent him.
Clark: Yeah, I understand you’ve been down there to New Orleans?
Larry: I was down there recently with my wife. I attended the National Wild Turkey Fair
Clark: Oh, you told me about that. You showed me a picture.
Larry: Got a beautiful plaque with my picture electroplated or something on it. It’s really
nice. I got six of those now. I don’t know why. Who the hell motivates people to
give those things to you, but…
Flick: I’ve got a turkey neck. Can I get in on it?
Larry: I do love to hunt turkeys, and since the…you know the quality of duck hunting out my
way has really deteriorated. Dave tells me it’s pretty damn bad in Louisiana now.
It’s nothin’ like it used to be. In my area one of the things I’d have to attribute that to
is the fact that there’s been such a big population explosion out our way. When I
moved to Albuquerque in 1940 the population was 35,000. Now it’s well over
300,000 and it keeps expanding. Lot of places where I used to hunt ducks, hell,
there’s mobile homes all around there. That’s a whole lot to do with the conditions
you hunt under now. I had a poor duck season last year and I profess to be a pretty
damn good duck hunter and duck caller. I can call anything that can be called. I
killed two ducks last year out of a three day hunt. That’s got to be pretty damns sad.
Davis/Merovka 21
Flick: You’re gittin’ to be a terrible shot Larry.
Larry: Well, one of our troubles there and any public shooting area is this damn “sky buses”
we call out my way. The minute these “sky buses” get out on the river every morning
that’s it. I mean every duck come by, I don’t care if he’s up there in the stratosphere
somebody’s gonna shoot at him. So you don’t have any chance to hunt him in a fair
way, bring him in, call him in and bring him in over the decoys, and that’s of course
disgusting as hell to a guy that knows how to hunt.
Flick: Takes the fun out of it.
Larry: That’s a population factor. Before we had all these people in there it was bad, but
wasn’t nothin’ as bad as it is now.
Flick: You had fewer people and more ducks.
Larry: That’s the truth. Now we got more people and fewer ducks.
Clark: Well that the case all over.
Flick: Right.
Larry: Anybody that sits where you are Clark is gonna have to take some heat. I’m sure
you’ve learned how to deal with it at least. You’ve been in there longer than any
director that I can recall, is that correct? Maybe ten years?
Clark: Eleven.
Larry: How many?
Clark: Eleven. Eleven this summer. I’m still surviving.
Flick: You’re doing damn good too.
Larry: If I remember right, you were recommended by Chuck.
Clark: Yeah, I think so.
Larry: I thought a helluva lot of Chuck Lawrence. Goddamn, I loved him like a brother, I
really did.
Clark: He was a fine man. No questions about that.
Davis/Merovka 22
Flick: He really was.
Larry: I spent a lot of time with Chuck. He and I went out to California to appraise this so-called
“legal” duck baiting program when it was first inaugurated in 1953 I
believe, or somewhere along in there. Chuck called Mr….(unintelligible)….wanted
to know if I could accompany him on that inspection out there. Said, “Hell Yeah.”
So he and I joined up together and we went out to…the state capital of California?
Clark: Sacramento.
Larry: Sacramento. Talked to…(unintelligible)… former director in Pennsylvania whose
dead now, Seth Gordon, and of course the way Seth put things to us he thought it was
necessary, the…(unintelligible)…were bad down there. He felt you know, put out
bait stations not closer than two hundred yards from where shooting would be done,
and I swear to God, I’m the man with the bait scoop. Chuck knew I was gonna be
aggressive with it and I was, goddammit. The federal wardens out there I’m
ashamed to say, goddammit had a very luke warm attitude to enforcing baiting
regulations. I guess that’s understandable because they worked with the state wardens
all the time. The state wardens said, “It’s O.K. We need baiting,” and so…you and I
don’t have the authority to fire an employee just like that, but Chuck came as damn
close to it as anybody ever did. He got so disgusted, so offended with the lack of
interest and aggressiveness this warden up there, one of our federal game agents…he
got mad as hell. I was with him, and he just flat told him he was gonna fire him and
by God the guy quit when I was still there. I can’t remember his name anymore.
Chuck was very disappointed at our record out there, and we had a poor record. I’m
gonna tell you this (I wouldn’t get on a witness stand to it): I was told, and I think it
was true, our agents were accepting valuable Christmas presents.
Flick: I think it’s a good deal like I told you last night Larry, that Leo [Laith] was as much to
blame for this as any of the rest of us.
Larry: Well, the regional directors were under heat too, you know. You know, it’s easy as
hell to be under civil service protection, but when you’re not under civil service
protection, by God, and you need to work, you need a job a lot of people…I don’t
know whether I would or not cause I wasn’t subjected to that kind of pressure cause
I had civil service protection. You don’t anymore do you?
Clark: Oh, I still do.
Larry: Do ya?
Clark: Yeah.
Davis/Merovka 23
Flick: Good.
Larry: I’m glad to hear that because I thought you were in that…
Clark: SES? No.
Larry: That’s fine…
Clark: it’s better this way.
Flick: Yeah, you bet.
Larry: It is true that if you don’t have civil service protection you’re more susceptible for
acceding to the pressure group than you are otherwise, and that’s understandable. A
man has a livin’ to make, course as a man of principal you’d have to push me pretty
damn far before I would yield to that sort of pressure.
Clark: The thing that’s really helped here has been Water Gate.
Larry: Who?
Clark: Watergate. After Watergate they just leave us alone completely.
Flick: That’s wonderful.
Larry: I’m sure you’re aware of this and that is: California has always had potent, as I can
remember, political influence, and Goddamn, they got it and they know how to use it.
and they use it. They damn well have used it in their efforts to get baiting eased.
Now, I was kind of curious: my records are mostly, as I indicated, up to maybe the
mid fifties. There was planners all outline in one of those bulletins as to what was
proposed to do to alleviate the damaged waterfowl in the Central Valley of California,
which is the main place where the birds depredate. One of the recommendations they
were gonna expand, agriculture program, put in more state and federal managed areas
and grow crops for these birds. Has that transpired? It’s all covered in that document
there, the Wetlands Program.
Clark: Yeah, I think somewhat. Most people agree Larry today that there’s no depredation
problems.
Larry: In California?
Clark: In the feeding clubs up in the central valley, there aren’t any, I mean the permits.
They’re no longer…
Davis/Merovka 24
Larry: Is that right?
Clark: Yeah. The only place they are is down around Salton Sea, in the southern part.
Larry: Oh, I didn’t know. Flick…(Clark and Larry talk at the same time. Unintelligible)…
If you haven’t been there you know that Sierra Madres range of mountain is on the
east side of California. On the west side you got your [Postal] mountains and then that
whole damn valley from Redding all the way down almost to Los Angeles is a big
broad agricultural area and that’s what they call the Central Valley. Well, you were
there, but anyway, that’s where the problems were always at.
Clark: Yeah, that’s where it initially started, up around North [Sadden] and so on…
Larry: Probably the Coachella Valley and Imperial is where they’re still depredated.
(Unintelligble)…a lot of letters done…(unintelligible)…used to be bad about
depredating down there.
Clark: But where the baiting clubs are now are all down in the Salton Sea area.
Larry: Well, I started sayin’ digress, and that is when I was with Chuck. Damn near
everyone of those blinds I went around was baited. I mean right by the damn blind.
Clark: Right up on the blind, huh?
Larry: Well, here’s what happened with one of ‘em that’s really clear in my mind. I went out
there and had the bait scoop, they called (at the time when I was down there) they
[myro mairs grain form], they called it [gyp form]. That was a California expression;
they called it [gyp form], but anyway, I’d scoop around there and come up with a
whole damn bunch of bait and bring it in, show it to Chuck and [Chet Lysart] and
everybody else, you know. So, we went to this club, I think it was in Orange County
which is down by Los Angeles and there was a lake that had been flooded seasonally
with what they used to call “dump water” down there, I think they call that class II
water also down there. But, anyway, I believe that water was available for duck club
use during the fall and winter months at $2.00 an acre foot, which is pretty damn
cheap. I wish I could buy some water $2.00 an acre foot…(unintelligible)…for down
near Mexico. But anyway,…(unintelligible)…shoot the next day. They shot I guess
three times a week, most of those clubs did. So they were gonna shoot the next day.
Bud Elder was the agent down there. I liked Bud personally, but he was another one
of them damn…(unintelligible)….He wasn’t doing much about enforcing the law. So
Chuck said, “Hell no, we’re not gonna let anybody sh….” Oh God, Bud was really
upset cause this bank person was a good friend of his, and Chuck said, “No damn way
are we gonna let him hunt tomorrow.” By God it made Bud unhappy as hell, but by
God that’s what happened. He went and told this bank president “no damn shootin’
over there tomorrow morning, and we’re gonna be over there looking down your
Davis/Merovka 25
throat,” but we weren’t. We thought that was sufficient notice to just tell him “No sir,
you’re not going down there until the bait’s cleared up.” Did you every read what
they call a [“Losteder”] Report?
Clark: Uh huh.
Larry: I haven’t seen that. I hear from him every Christmas. He writes me a long letter.
There was another report that was written on the baiting situation in California. Was
that the one…
Clark: There should have been three.
Larry: …where they decided it was not hurting the resource?
Clark: Well, that’s the last one.
Larry: That was the last one, wasn’t it?
Clark: Yeah.
Flick: Chuck wrote it.
Clark: Yeah, well there’s three. I think…I forgot. We’ve got ‘em on file here. I haven’t
looked at ‘em’s for so long I can’t remember…
Larry: I had that last one and I couldn’t find it. There was one where they made a study
when Greenwalt was…
Clark: That’s the one where they said it didn’t do any harm. You can’t hurt ‘em by shootin’
‘em. Have fun with ducks, remember that?
Larry: Who was on that committee?
Clark: Well Larry [John] was on it, a young guy by the…
Larry: Larry [John] was to be a good man.
Clark: He was a good man. He’s a good man.
Larry: Is he still with management?
Clark: Yeah. There’s a guy, he’s up in Boston too or we’d have him come over. There was a
guy from the duck place there at McGraw Edison, McGraw Duck Farm, raisin’…
Davis/Merovka 26
Larry: Oh yeah, in Illinois?
Clark: Yeah, well, there was a guy that manages that, whatever his name was, George
somethin’, and then there was a young college professor out of Missouri by the name
of Fredrickson, Lee Fredrickson, that kind of headed the study. He was sort of the
paid guy that did most of the study. His students did a lot of the data collection I
guess and stuff. And Bill [Uwey] was on the committee.
Larry: Bill was?
Clark: Yeah. And who else? Some guy from California that was with the state, Red, Red
somethin’, but he was a state waterefall biologist. He was on the committee. We had
pretty good representation, but you see the study is a little misleading. You have to be
very careful of what it says, I mean you have to read it very carefully because there’s
no question without the feed there wouldn’t be any ducks if they didn’t flood that
area…(unintelligible)….It’s just a desert where it is, around the Salton Sea, but the
issue was whether the birds were goin’ right to the gun. Well you know, after they’ve
been there a while they’d come in and circle around and land right in the feeding
station, and you know… they adopt their habits, I mean they killed some, but the
dumb ones. The smart ones learned how to survive, so you can make a study to show
most anything.
Larry: In one of those articles I brought, it mentioned they formed an ad-hock committee
to appraise this situation, but I don’t think we’re talkin’ about the same one. This one
came up with a firm recommendation against liberalizing the baiting regulation. Are
you familiar with that one?
Clark: Oh, that’s the one about sixty-nine or seven.
Larry: Yeah.
Clark: That’s a different committee. That was made up of some concerned sportsmen and
interested citizens. I think Larry [John] was on that one too as a matter of fact. It had
Judge McBride from California, had a number of lawyers, quite a few conservation-ists;
there’s about eight or ten, eleven, I think eleven people on that committee.
Larry: And, they had recommended against baiting.
Clark: Oh yeah. Sure. Very strongly. And there’s no intent, I don’t think, to liberalize the
regulations per say, it’s more about (right now) how do we keep the innocent hunter
from getting’ caught up in the otherwise, you know, where he can’t do anything to
detect the bait himself, you know, where it’s submerged and he goes out and…
Davis/Merovka 27
Larry: I think if I were on the witness stand like you may be, and that question was put to me
I would answer it in the fashion that being a law enforcement officer; if they have to
appraise it on the matter of facts and circumstances as to…if a guy could establish it
to your satisfaction and the court or the jury that he did not actually have any
knowledge of it then the verdict would probably go in his favor, however, he would
still object to being arraigned and tried on the issue of whether he was cognizant of
the presence of the bait or not. That is a sticky…
Clark: That’s the problem.
Larry: That’s the problem, yeah.
Clark: And even though we don’t…we just like, to my knowledge never prosecuted anybody
that really didn’t know, and I think the agents all used pretty good judgment…
Larry: I think that’s true.
Clark: …but still they’re technically liable for a penalty. I told old Ray he’s got to be careful
who he hunts with. He’s gonna go out and hunt with somebody that’s gonna bait and
set him up, why he ought not to hunt with that guy.
Larry: Have you told him that?
Clark: I told him that. He kind of grinned. “Well, they’re my friends,” and I said, ‘They’re
some kind of friends.’ They think they’d get away with it.
Larry: I honestly don’t think that there’s any pat answer to the damn question myself. On the
basis of my long experience with law enforcement there’s just one of those things that
like you say, it would largely lie with the judgment of the agent. I don’t know
whether it would be a good idea for you to require a report on the circumstances
before you authorize the charges be filed or not. The agent might feel he was being
muzzled. I don’t know that that’s a good approach either.
Clark: Well, supervisors generally require a report if it’s a commercial shoot, like you were
talking about where the guys goin’ in and payin’; it’s not a close personal relation-ship,
it’s a commercial kind of thing and if there’s no bait there no way this guy could
know, I mean hell, it could be any of us could of gone in there and paid the money for
the month and we wouldn’t know that it was paid. So, we go after the club owner
and maybe have the hunter show up as a witness or something, but they don’t get
prosecuted. It’s kind of a red herring.
Larry: Have you got fore knowledge as to what the likely discussion will be on the issue that
you just mentioned, what are you gonna do about the innocent hunter?
Davis/Merovka 28
Clark: I think that’s gonna be the line of questioning that we’re gonna get, and I think that the
NRA and some of them will come in with proposals to make us prove that the hunter
knew or should have known that it was baited. If you put that burden of proof on the
government it’s gonna be very difficult because the hunter’s just gonna say, “I
didn’t…,” and you’re gonna destroy, we believe and our statement will so state that
the hunter still needs in any kind of new scheme the hunter has to have responsibility
himself. You gotta hold him responsible to inquire, to examine, to make sure and to do
everything you can to police himself. If he doesn’t have any responsibility why then
the chances of catching the person puttin’ the bait out as you know is very difficult.
We know that and they know that and so maybe nothin’ will happen.
Larry: The fact that maybe, this I think would be a pertinent point, I think that the potential of
getting a quality hunt should alert the hunter to the fact that that quality hunting he’s
gonna get is probably a result of that place being baited, and I think that was a point
you might make.
Clark: That’s a good point Larry, and it’s the same as we have where these guides will take
somebody on a guaranteed hunt for a big trophy animal, you know pretty well it’s in
the past season or it’s in the national park or it’s some place where it shouldn’t be.
(Flick attempts to get a word in)
Larry: Clark, did you see that 60 Minutes program Sunday?
Clark: Oh yeah, I saw that. That didn’t look very good, did it?
Larry: No, it sure the hell didn’t. They’re gonna get a bad repercussion from that.
Clark: I think so. It didn’t look very good.
Larry: They always…I tell you the thing that really angered me more that anything in my
experience from the standpoint of criticism was that miserable The Guns of Autumn.
Boy, I sent a strong letter of protest to the commission, the Federal Communications
Commission, whatever it was. I sent a copy to this office and got a letter back about
it. Oh that really shook me up. They made a deliberate effort to make things
repugnant to public view.
(Clark turns the recording system off at this point)
END OF TAPE 2